


Peter of Sparks

by LucyCrewe11 (Raphaela_Crowley)



Series: The Chronicles of Ember [2]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, The City of Ember - Jeanne DuPrau
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Drama, F/M, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Romance, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27566947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphaela_Crowley/pseuds/LucyCrewe11
Summary: A week after leaving Ember, the Pevensies have arrived at the village of Sparks. Can Peter help keep the peace between two groups of very different people?
Relationships: Doon Harrow/Lina Mayfleet, Edmund Pevensie/Lucy Pevensie, Peter Pevensie/Susan Pevensie
Series: The Chronicles of Ember [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009422
Kudos: 1





	1. What Gael Saw

**Author's Note:**

> Written summer 2010

Eustace Clarence Scrubb was breaking the thin layer of ice over the donkey's water-trough, a chore he utterly detested-though, to be honest, there were precious few he didn't-when he saw little Gael running up the somewhat slippery, slush-and-dusty-snow covered path as fast as her short legs would carry her, her red-and-green woolen winter cape streaming out unevenly over her pale lavender dress, butter-yellow stockings, and small second-hand black, flat-soled boots. She stopped only when she absolutely _had_ to, to catch her breath, then she would reassume sprinting.

All the while she was crying out, "Mummy! Mummy!"

Quite suddenly she bumped directly into him.

" _Ow_ ," Eustace barked at her ill-temperedly. "Watch it, puny!" Being a rather smallish-sized person himself, Gael was actually one of the few people small enough for him to say such a thing to, and he never missed a chance to do so.

"But I've got to tell Mummy," Gael said, panting harder now.

"Tell her what?" he snapped superiorly, likely thinking she was playing some sort of a childish trick on him.

"About the _people_."

"People?" Eustace cocked an eyebrow upwards, genuinely curious in spite of himself. "What people?"

"There's people coming over the hill, towards the village." Gael's eyes sparkled with excitement, though she might have thought to be a little afraid, too, if she'd been just a few years older. "A whole lot of them."

Eustace wasn't sure if he ought to believe her. On the one hand, Gael got excited over every little thing that happened day in and day out-and no 'lot' of people ever came into their village. One or two persons, roamers with goods sell, popped up occasionally; but Gael's story sounded as silly as if she had claimed to find magic beans in the vegetable beds. On the other, if it _were_ true, it wasn't at all likely that he would be made to do any more chores for that day, since everyone would be so busy figuring out who this strange crowd was and what they wanted.

Jill Pole, a fair-haired girl who was around Eustace's age (a year or so older than Gael), came walking by with half-a-carrot in her out-stretched fingerless-gloved hands; she liked visiting the donkey even though he wasn't hers.

"Hallo, Puzzle," Jill said cheerfully, about to let him have the carrot piece when Gael tugged at her sleeve and blurted out her story about 'the people'.

Stunned, she dropped the carrot at once and it fell onto the floor of the pen. Puzzle went after it, sniffing his nose at the cold ground, but the children took no notice. They all, even Eustace, were beginning to feel the thrill of shivers running up and down their spines.

Gael kept on going to find her mother; Eustace didn't care a fig about telling anyone, he just wanted to see the people for himself; and Jill went to look for the town officials as her parents, back when they had been alive, had always told her she ought to do in case of an emergency. This, it seemed, certainly was as big of an emergency as their little village was ever likely to get.

When Eustace, standing at the very edge of the village borders, saw the people he felt first a wave of amusement at their funny appearances, followed almost instantly by disappointment. They were not an impressive looking group, that was for sure.

Despite the fact that there were perhaps maybe three or four hundred people all together, there was nothing war-like or even particularly strong about them. They were weak-looking and frail and overtly pale-faced. Gael had a pale complexion that burned red if she got too much sun, unlike Jill and Eustace both of whom browned up nicely each summer, but even she was not so white and stunted as nearly every single person in the crowd now facing him was. They looked like little sprouts that had tried to grow up under a heavy board or a big rock. What was more, their clothes were all tattered and had been patched up more times than all of Jill Pole's hand-me-down smocks put together.

Eustace opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a strangled-sounding laugh.

The boy closest to the front, a tallish, blonde young man of about fourteen carrying something that shivered and coughed in his arms, looked understandably cross at this. On his left, a pretty-faced, dark-haired girl maybe a year his junior put her head down wearily on his shoulder; she looked exhausted as if his arm was the only thing holding her up at the moment.

Another girl, perhaps a dozen years old, was carrying a two-year-old infant in her arms, anxiously looking over her shoulder back at a boy her own age and his tired father.

Thankfully, the town officials, Marianne Waters, Wilhelm Gent, and Benjamin Barlow showed up before Eustace could stop laughing and out-right say something offensive.

"Who are you?" Marianne asked in a very loud voice, not because she was necessarily shouting but because she was trying to be heard over the raspy gasps and moans of the newly-arrived crowd. "Where did you come from?"

"Peter, you tell them." The girl with dark hair lifted her head off of his shoulder; her voice sounded frail, but there was a sort of almost royal air about it all the same.

Peter shifted his gaze from Eustace to the dark-haired girl; then he stared down for a moment at whatever he was carrying in his arms. When his eyes finally met Marianne's, she saw that they were glassy and blood-shot.

"My good lady," he said, his voice cracking a little, "we are refugees from the now-dead city of Ember."

"Where's that?" Wilhelm muttered to Benjamin, who, in turn, shrugged his shoulders.

"We have never heard of it," Marianne told Peter, after an uncertain pause. "Where is it?"

"Seven day's walk from here," the dark-haired girl said.

"There is no city only a week's march from here, that is quite impossible." Benjamin's eyes narrowed. "We'd have heard of it before now if such were true."

"But, no," piped the girl with the two-year-old child in her arms; "you wouldn't have heard of it at all-it was underground."

"Nonsense," said Benjamin, though secretly he thought they did look rather grubby, all else put aside, sort of like they really could have climbed up from a hole some place. "Where is your leader?"

"We…don't really have one anymore," the dark-haired girl told them. "Aside from Peter, he's as in charge as anyone."

"Our mayor's dead," a red-haired, snippy-looking girl chimed in. "Drowned."

"Hush, Lizzie." Someone gripped the girl from behind and pulled her towards the back.

"Excuse me, Madam Mayor." The girl carrying the two year old spoke up again, looking pleadingly at Marianne. "My name is Lina Mayfleet."

"Madam Mayor?" Eustace mouthed to Jill as she came and stood next to him. "No one calls her _that_." It was true, actually, no one had ever referred to any of the town officials in such a formal manner; they just called them by their first names.

"Susan's little sister is very sick," the girl went on. She motioned over at Peter, and he opened his arms a little bit so that they could now see what he carried.

It was a little girl of no more than seven or so; he'd been keeping the folds of his tattered coat over her in an attempt to keep her warm. Her eyes were half-closed with dark circles around them, and her whole face appeared listless-borderline lifeless, even.

"Others are ill, too." Lina swallowed hard. "And some are hurt or worn-out and won't make it through another day of walking; Mrs. Polly Kirke can barely stand up." She motioned over at an elderly woman next to an old man-her husband, Digory Kirke-who was trying to help her stay on her feet, but didn't appear to be in the best shape himself.

"Will you help us?" asked the dark-haired girl, Susan.

Benjamin's mouth opened, then closed. What could he say? There were so many people…

Wilhelm winced; there were definitely too many of the strangers.

Marianne kept looking at the sick child in Peter's arms. Clearly she wanted to help the little girl-only a person with a heart of stone wouldn't have-but didn't see how she could do so without helping the others as well. And there were _so_ many…

"Mummy, Mummy, there they are! I told you there were people! Look, Mummy, look!" Gael came running forward dragging her mother, the village doctor, by the hand.

"Marianne," said Gael's mother, a little taken aback. "Who are they?"

"We're the people of Ember," Susan said.

"They say they came from underground," Wilhelm whispered.

"I don't still don't think I believe it," muttered Benjamin under his breath.

"I don't know what to do for them, Doctor Hester," Marianne said in a low, somber tone. "There's too many, clearly. But they've got old and sick ones with them-ill children, too."

Doctor Hester looked at them again, took in their weak visible breaths in the cold air and felt a wave of pity. The poor things! The pity only deepened when she noticed the little girl in Peter's arms, she appeared to be in pretty bad shape, the poor dear.

"What's gonna happen to the girl, Mummy?" Gael asked, standing on tip-toes and noticing what her mother was half-gaping at. "What's her name?"

"Her name is Lucy," Peter answered, since Doctor Hester wouldn't have known and Gael didn't seem inclined to quiet down without a reply. "She's my stepsister."

"There must be something we can do," mulled Marianne, looking over at Lina and the two year old again.

Wilhelm seemed unable to tear his eyes away from Digory and Polly and the five or six people that stood to their right, who were even older than they were; there was one woman, Nammy Proggs, she had to be at least eighty-five, if not older. Her ashen skin was practically see-through.

"At the very least, Marianne," said Doctor Hester, gripping onto Gael's shoulders so that the little girl couldn't run, as she seemed prone to, in and out of the midst of the tired, strange crowd, "I could take the very sickest ones home with me, they won't be able to stand the cold any longer. At least, not safely." She said 'they', but everyone knew she meant Lucy.

"Go on, Peter." Susan nudged him. "You take Lucy and go with the doctor, then."

He shook his head. "No, Su, I'll stay here with the others, you go." Ever so carefully, he placed an unmoving, half-unconscious Lucy into her sister's arms. "See if the doctor will take Ed, too. I'm worried about that cough of his-it keeps sounding worse and worse every five minutes."

"Which one is 'Ed'?" Doctor Hester asked, over-hearing this.

"My little brother," Peter told her. "Edmund." He pointed to a boy of about nine they hadn't noticed before; he had dark hair, a brave, bold face, and serious, clearly uneasy brown eyes which were even more blood-shot than his brother's were.

"He hasn't said much," Susan apologized when, instead of even attempting to introduce himself, Edmund just coughed into his hand and withdrew closer to his elder stepsister's side. "He more or less stopped talking when Lucy got sick."

Eustace gave Edmund a rather condescending look, to which, the grave boy offered a surprisingly, completely unexpected, fierce-almost stately-expression, that, though he would have never admitted that was what he'd done, Eustace sort of half-hid behind Jill Pole.

"Come along, Dear." Doctor Hester reached out and patted Susan's quivering arms gingerly. "I'll see what I can do for your sister and stepbrother."

"Thank you," Susan managed weakly, peering over her shoulder back at Peter before picking up the pace and following the doctor at a good, solid speed.

"The rest of you," said Benjamin, clearly with a great deal of reluctance. "Come with me to the town hall. We'll see what we're going to do for you. Goodness knows how we'll get you all to fit…"

"Excuse me, Sir," said Peter as he and the crowd started following the town leaders; "what is this place called?"

"Sparks," he answered. "The village-or town, whichever you prefer-of Sparks."

"I don't know where these cave people think they're all going to sleep," Eustace muttered to Jill. "Not in _my_ room, that's for sure."


	2. How they came to be in Sparks

Leaning against the door-post of Spark's Town Hall, a long, low-roofed brown building, listening to the shivering and sneezing of his fellow refugees mixing with the further-up loud murmurs of Marianne, Benjamin, and Wilhelm struggling to come to some sort of agreement on a plan for them, Peter closed his eyes and thought about how they had come to be there.

He had been sitting on a grassy hill of some kind with Susan and Lucy. Both girls had been perfectly healthy and stable then, beyond excited when they saw the sun rise, a sight they had never seen in their birth world; having only ever seen a sun and a blue sky during their time as queens of Narnia. After discovering their city of Ember had been underground, they'd tied a note to a rock and hurled it down, hoping it would fall into good hands.

As the hours dragged on, the air still mostly warm though definitely chiller than it had been earlier, they'd begun to worry.

"Supposing they didn't find our note, Peter," Susan had whispered to him in a low, just barely audible, voice so that Lucy wouldn't hear and worry, too. "What do we do?"

"I'll take care of you," he'd reassured her. "You and Lucy both." But deep down, he was anxious, too. He wanted everyone else to find their way out before it was too late. Especially his little brother Edmund. And then when he thought of Aunt Polly and Digory who had so graciously taken them in after their parents had died, his heart nearly sank. They weren't so young as they once were; who was helping them? And what about Doon and Lina? They were only children, and Lina's sister was still little more than a baby.

"Peter! Peter!" Lucy cried out, breaking into his thoughts, pointing over at where they themselves had come out the night before. "Someone's coming!"

The first people out were only vaguely familiar faces, but they were glad enough to see them anyway and to heartily welcome them into the new place they'd found.

Lucy took to dashing around the whole area as it filled more and more with the people of Ember, filing out in increasingly large groups, looking for anyone she knew. She saw Lizzie, one of Lina's friends, and was nice to her in passing, while Susan, who remembered that Lizzie had been dating Looper-the one helping the corrupt mayor cheat the rest of the citizens-had to greet her through her teeth.

Then Lucy saw Doon and his father, Mr. Harrow, and ran over to them both with squeals of delight. She asked about Lina, who turned up just behind them, carrying Poppy piggy-back. So that was all right, then.

"Is Edmund with you?" Lucy didn't want to be rude, but she was especially anxious about him in particular and simply couldn't hold back the question any longer.

"He stayed with the Professor and Polly," Doon told her. "He was the one who found the note you three sent down-it crashed right through the window."

"We were hiding in the wardrobe," Lina added.

"Lucy?"

She spun around and saw Edmund standing there beside Polly and Digory, all three of them carrying tattered sacks with a few cans of food and some ratty blankets inside.

"Edmund!"

Edmund dropped his sack on the ground and ran to her. The two children locked hands at once and danced around in a merry circle overjoyed to see one another again. There had been a few moments when they weren't certain they would. Now it seemed like everything was going to be just fine after all.

"Thank heavens," breathed Peter, upon seeing his brother safe and sound.

"Are you all right?" Susan asked, bending down to her stepbrother's level.

"I'm a little tired," was his response.

"And understandably so!" Peter exclaimed, actually laughing with relief. "We were worried that the note would fall into the wrong hands."

"Speaking of the wrong hands," said Susan, quite suddenly, looking around at everyone within a reasonable distance and then back at Edmund again. "Where _is_ the mayor? And that wrenched Looper?"

"Dead," Edmund told them. "Both of them."

"How?" asked Peter.

"Well, when we got the note and knew for sure that you had made it out of Ember safely-that the way worked-we figured we couldn't hide anymore, guards or no guards. And we went straight to the town hall, right up on the roof where the Mayor usually stands, and made the announcement to the whole city. We kept expecting the mayor and his guards-or else Looper-to come and try to stop us at any second; but they never did."

"They just stood there and let you announce the way out of Ember to the whole city?" Susan gasped in disbelief.

"No," said Edmund, shaking his head. "They weren't even there."

"Where were they?" Peter wanted to know.

Edmund shrugged his shoulders. "At first we couldn't see them, only now we know they must have been hiding in amongst the crowd in the square, listening to every word we said."

"But why would they do that?" Lucy here interjected, confused.

Digory Kirke, hearing them, answered the question for Edmund. "While we were all busy organizing everybody so that we could all travel safely, Mayor Cole-Looper with him-made a break for the room where he had all his stolen goods and started loading up the boats meant for us with food. He didn't care, obviously, if _we_ got out or not. He didn't even care about defending his own honour or pride, just about getting out himself with all that good food, you see. I think he would have abandoned Looper pretty early on-he's not a man of his word, you know-but he needed the extra help carrying things. Not all of the guards would help him, only the ones as corrupt as he was did anything for him then, a number of them-shocking as it sounds-helped _us_."

"And when we came down, they were still loading their things," Polly continued. "They weren't moving quickly enough, I guess. So, then, he saw us and Looper screamed…and then…" Here, her voice trailed off.

"He tipped the boat over," Edmund explained. It hadn't been a pleasant scene, and he understood why Polly wasn't all that keen to revisit it in great detail. "And of course Mayor Cole, not thinking straight, as usual, did something pretty idiotic. He lunged for the boat to steady it, fell in, and drowned almost right away."

"He took Looper down with him," Digory added, motioning over at Lizzie, who Peter now saw was wearing a well-frayed black scarf. She was in mourning.

"Poor Lizzie," Susan sighed, clicking her tongue. "She never did have much sense. I-I-I do feel a little sorry for her, though, I think she was the only person who really liked him. Even his parents-I think that's them over there, by the big tree with Edward Pocket, the Librarian-don't seem terribly sad."

Lucy made a face. "He was horrid. Remember that fist fight he had with Peter? I'm almost glad that he-"

"Peter!" Susan snapped, turning on him suddenly. "Are you going to let her talk like that? What sort of example-"

"Looper put a knife to your throat, Su, he hurt you," said Peter, his blue eyes darkening a full shade with anger; "excuse me if I don't exactly feel like weeping for him or throwing a grand lord's funeral."

"Amen," Edmund muttered, rolling his eyes.

It took almost a full day for everyone to be counted and food supplies to be charted before they could set off looking for some place where their were other people, people who might be able to help them.

They'd started out with nearly five hundred saved from the underground city (Peter didn't like to think about how that meant at least fifty or so were lost, likely for ever, down there) but as they walked on, a terrible thing started happening. People were falling ill, some were just randomly collapsing. And not just elderly persons, either; young people who had never been quite at the peek of health down in Ember, but had been-in the climate they were used to-strong enough to live semi-normal lives anyway started to fare badly.

Worse still was the moment the snow started falling. At first it was exciting; Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy hadn't seen snow since their time in Narnia, and no one else with them had _ever_ seen it. As soon as Peter was able to assure them, with as much conviction as he could spare without giving his past-life as a high king away, that it wasn't dangerous, most of the people started laughing and playing. Lina and Doon taught themselves-then Poppy-how to make snowballs, and Lucy and Edmund showed all three of them how to lie on the ground when the snow settled and form 'angel' imprints. Susan, if only to distract from her fear that none of them knew where they were going or what they were headed for, made one, too.

Unfortunately, what none of them had realized-or in the Pevensies' case, remembered-was that the people of Ember didn't have much immunity to cold and rolling around in it and then walking along in frigid air for hours afterwards. And this began to take its toll. Coughs worsened, old people wheezed, even middle-aged people who'd had no health-related complaints up till then had endless runny noses to deal with.

By the end of the week over one hundred deaths had come and gone. Some were people Peter knew well, others weren't, but each time it was still an unspeakably painful blow. Then Lucy and Edmund started coughing and Peter stopped sleeping at night, Susan sleeping only on-and-off very sparingly. Edmund's cough was pretty bad, but it was clearly Lucy who was the biggest worry; she lost the strength even to stand, so Peter had to carry her, first on his back then in his arms, the rest of the way.

It was an unavoidable fact that the canned food brought from their city was running out. The sound of stomachs growling could easily be heard even more clearly than the howling winter wind, day and night.

Then, after what felt like years yet was really only seven days, they'd arrived at Sparks. A real village with people and houses and, thank heavens, a doctor.

Everything's going to be all right now, Peter thought to himself, Lucy and Edmund are with the doctor, Doctor Hester, and Susan's with them. The others who need help and attention will get it soon.

Taking in a deep breath, Peter opened his eyes and looked over at Marianne, Benjamin, and Wilhelm; they appeared ready to say something now.


	3. Susan at the doctor's house

"Right this way," Doctor Hester told them, leading Edmund, Susan, and Lucy towards a square-roomed house with a slanted dark brown roof and pale-coloured, slightly yellowed shingles all around one side of it.

Gael trotted along at their sides, sort of half-smiling, unsure if she was supposed to be glad that some of 'the people' were coming to her house (which she was) or else sad because the little girl was so awfully sick and the boy didn't look like he felt very good, either. She finally settled on alternating her half-smile with the soberest expression a child her age could possibly muster up by turn.

Lucy shivered in her sister's arms. Her eyes were closed all the way now and Edmund wondered if she was even aware that it was Susan carrying her instead of Peter. He felt another cough rack his body, tried-and failed-to fight it off, gave in, and stood on the doctor's narrow front porch, wheezing into his left arm for nearly four full minutes.

"Your brother was right." Doctor Hester gave Susan a concerned glance. "That poor boy's cough _does_ sound awful."

Susan thought for a moment about what the doctor had just said. "Wait, you think…oh no, Peter isn't my brother. I mean, not technically. We have different parents; he's Edmund's brother."

Doctor Hester shrugged her shoulders; she hadn't been paying close attention when Peter told Gael that Lucy-Susan's sister-was his stepsister. "I thought Edmund was your brother, too. You have the same dark hair."

"Hmm," agreed Susan. In Ember, people who hadn't known about them being a blended family had been prone to making similar remarks.

"I have dark hair, too," Gael chimed in, forgetting that she'd been trying to be graver. "Can Edmund be my brother, then? I've never had any brothers or sisters before. I pretended once that Eustace Scrubb was my brother, except, only, he likes to call me names-Edmund's better, he doesn't talk."

Susan cracked a smile at that; she might have actually laughed if she hadn't been so worried over Lucy.

"No, dear, I'm afraid he can't," Gael's mother told her. "He isn't related to us at all."

"Oh, I see." Gael sounded disappointed. She looked down at her feet and really did look genuinely sad for a few seconds as her mother opened the door and they all filed into the house.

"Gael, sweetheart," Doctor Hester said; "why don't you help Mummy with her job?"

Gael's eyes lit up and she grinned expectedly. She loved to help and to learn and to work, but most people said she was too little, never letting her do much of anything. But not Mummy, though, she almost always let her help. And, unlike some of the people who scoffed at her and shooed her away, her mother was a doctor-which was a very, very important thing to be, she'd gathered. Why else would the people of Sparks need her so urgently all the time?

"Fetch the jars of herbs from the bottom shelf," her mother ordered, knowing she could trust Gael, young though she was, to obey the letter of the law and get what was needed without ingesting any of it.

Gael scrambled off to do what she was told. Susan stood, wide-eyed, holding onto Lucy a little tighter as she peered nervously over at the fireplace. She dimly remembered seeing one before, in a bed chamber that had once been hers, only it hadn't been in Ember. In Ember, fire usually spelled disaster. Regardless, she didn't trust the flames to stay where they were supposed to.

Edmund, not seeming to share her apprehension of the crackling flames in the least, walked closer to it and spread out his numb fingers, warming them.

"Edmund!" Susan hissed, setting Lucy's limb little body down on a lumpy-looking couch that-thankfully-was at least four feet away from the fireplace. "Get back here-that's not safe."

"What's not safe?" Doctor Hester turned and looked at her with a puzzled expression. "The fire? You're not used to fire? It's quite safe, I promise, it'll stay right in there."

"I've…I've seen something like it before," Susan admitted shakily. "But I…I wasn't sure…"

Shaking his head, Edmund sighed heavily. He wondered how Peter would have reacted if he had heard Susan just now; he knew his brother must suspect Susan was beginning to forget Narnia, but also that he was probably a little bit in denial about that still. And understandably, too. Narnia meant a lot to the four of them-it was the only place they'd ever seen a blue sky or animals or a fire that wasn't dangerous or a million other things before now-and it was hard to think of one of them falling away from their memories.

Sometimes, when he looked at sickly little Lucy, wondering with fear in his heart if she was going to recover, he thought maybe those memories really were all the four of them had left. They'd left Narnia and none of them knew if they would ever be going back-in spite of the fact that Digory Kirke seemed to think they would, maybe, some day-and now the city they had been born in, lived in with their parents-their blended family happy together, never knowing they were underground-was gone, lost in blackness for ever.

Peter was in charge now. He was the only one the frightened people of Ember could count on. However much he loved his brother, Edmund worried; Peter may have been a good high king, but things were different then. The Narnians had known things the Emberites didn't.

The Narnians-fauns and dryads alike-knew how to get food and feed themselves, how to plant things and light safe fires. The Narnians had generous neighbors, the Archenlanders, who showed their true kind faces when the White Witch was defeated and out of the way. The Narnians had homes that, even if they'd been destroyed during the hundred year winter, could be re-built. What did the Emberites have? They were out of supplies, and although the people of Sparks were kind enough to take them in for now, they didn't seem, Edmund thought, at all like they wanted them to stay-at least, not for good. And what would happened afterwards? Peter couldn't possibly grow food and make weapons (if needed) and build houses and provide clothes for three or four hundred people by himself. In this world, Edmund knew his nine year old body wasn't going to be much good for hard labor-not at all like his grown-up king body had been; Susan was a fragile girl, for all her sensibleness and mental strength, and Lucy was sick and even younger than he himself was. What on earth were they going to do?

"Good, good," the doctor was saying, opening some of the jars Gael had brought to her. "This herb should…darn…no, that won't help, that's for hemorrhoids. I've got to label these better..."

Susan winced and squeezed Lucy's hand as hard as she dared. She wished the doctor was more organized. "Doctor Hester," she said, when the doctor had stopped muttering to herself for a few moments, "do you have any aspirin? I think she has a fever, she'll need something to bring it down."

"It'll have to be a herb, dear," Doctor Hester told her. "We don't have those kinds of medicines here anymore-not for at least a half a century. Did you have it where you came from?"

"Oh, yes," Susan said. "But we were running out by the time the city was dying, I think."

"Here what we have," said the doctor, "is herbs." She pulled one out of its jar. "Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But I do my best."

"I'm sure you do." Susan forced herself to smile, not wanting the doctor to think she was ungrateful.

The doctor smiled back. "Here, hold her mouth open so I can give her this. It might help with the fever."

Susan nodded and stuck two of her fingers in-between Lucy's lips to pry them open. A few coughs came out in protest, but they were faint and weak; both Susan and the doctor, much as they hated doing so, were able to force-feed the herb to her without too much trouble.

"She's flinching a little less," Susan noted, her voice anxious. "Is that good or bad?"

Edmund glanced over at Doctor Hester suspiciously, his brow slightly lowered.

"That herb is known for inducing sleep, it's perfectly normal," she explained quickly. "Now, for the little boy." She turned to Edmund and made him take a few spoonfuls of some sort of nasty concoction that tasted like spoiled tea mixed with dirt and wash-water. "That should help with his cough." She paused, thought, then added, "I'd best fix some ginger with honey later on, too. That'll do both of them a world of good, I should think."

"Thank you…for everything," Susan said softly, nearly whispering.

"I'm a doctor, it's my job." She shrugged her shoulders and smiled again.

"Right now," said Gael, grinning, "I'm a doctor, too. Only when I grow up, I don't wanna be one. I want to be a dancer."

Doctor Hester's forehead crinkled. "I thought you wanted to be a roamer."

"That was before Eustace told me that roamers have to whip people," Gael said, her mouth going down into a pout. "I don't want to hurt anyone…whips hurt, don't they, Mummy?"

"Yes," sighed Doctor Hester. "Yes, they do."

"Then I'm going to be a dancer, like the ballet dancers they had before the Disaster."

"Gael, it's a lost art," the doctor warned her.

Gael clapped her hands. "Good! Because I'm going to find it." Her eyes sparkled. "When I'm big, maybe as old as Susan, I'm going to start up the ballet company again."

"Whatever you say, now go wash up for supper." Doctor Hester turned to the iron stove in the corner of the kitchen and started boiling some water.

Susan winced; another flame, lovely. Was nothing safe in this place? Why couldn't everything be neat and decent and orderly like it was in Ember? Why did the lights have to go off? Why did they have to run out of food? It made all the sense in the world, and yet none whatsoever at the same time. Things had been going well, she thought, corrupt mayor put aside. She had just gotten a job as a messenger; she and Lina Mayfleet both. Lucy was still in school, and so was Edmund. Peter had a job, too. They had a life, now they had to start a new one all over again. It was beyond frustrating. Lucy hadn't been sick in Ember; Edmund had talked in Ember. Why did Ember have to be underground? Why couldn't things have gone on like they always had?

But, she knew, she had to accept that they lived here now-or _for_ now, at any rate. Here, in the village of Sparks. Here, with this nice doctor and her daughter. Maybe she could get used to this, even if it took a while. This was all they had now. This was their life.

"Doctor Hester?" Susan said quietly, so as not to wake her sister and stepbrother who had both, it seemed, fallen asleep; Lucy on couch and Edmund on the floor beside the couch, using the back of his arm for a pillow.

"Yes?" The doctor looked up from the boiling stove-top, wondering what she wanted.

Susan plucked one of the semi-ratty couch pillows that Lucy wasn't using, lifted Edmund's head up, and tucked it under him. "What was the Disaster?"

"Well, it was started with the great wars," she said, grimacing at the thought. "And you know how they ended."

"No," said Susan, looking down borderline-shamefully at her own fingertips, "I don't."

"You do know what war is, don't you?" The doctor wanted to explain, but it would be hard if they couldn't find a common ground-something they both understood.

A faint picture of a young man who looked very like Peter, only older and in a different kind of clothing, flashed in her mind, passing like a shooting star. He was sitting on a horse wearing armour for protection, a sword strapped to his side. Something giants, something raid…she couldn't remember…

"Sort of," Susan finally managed. "It's like...like when one group of people fights another, right?"

"That's right." Doctor Hester nodded.

"So," Susan tried to guess, "there was a war up here…a long, long time ago…and…and then people were…hurt? Was that the Disaster?"

"In so many words, yes." Doctor Hester shelled some peas and dropped them into the boiling pot. "But there was more to it. Unbeatable sicknesses came afterwards, like plagues. Killed thousands."

Susan shuddered. Then, "And before the Disaster there were…dancers? Like Gael wants to be?"

"Oh, who knows?" she answered, her expression slightly forlorn for a few seconds. "Who knows if even a quarter of the stuff they say about life before the Disaster is true? They say a lot. They say they had electricity, for one-that, I can believe. Other things…well, I don't know."

"We had electricity in Ember," Susan told her, unable to keep a small twinge of pride out of her voice. "That's what gave us light."

"I wish we had it here sometimes."

"Couldn't you get it? I mean, there must be a way."

"I don't know."

"What else was there?" Susan pressed, surprised at her own curiosity-usually she didn't pester people like this.

"Dancers had a ballet company and traveled the world for one, they say. That's what Gael has her heart set on now; next week, I've no doubt, it'll be something different. They had bigger houses, with more luxuries. They had an easier way of getting food, too, apparently."

"Oh!" Susan exclaimed, feeling a flicker of hope rush through her veins. An easier way of getting food would be helpful for the people of Ember, since they didn't know anything about growing crops; everything they'd had always came from cans in their storerooms. "What was the way?"

"Don't know," said the doctor. She came close to asking Susan to stir the pot while she looked for something, but she noticed the way the girl was eyeing both the fire in the fireplace and the little flame on the stove with an unsteady, nervous gaze that still hadn't passed, and decided against it. Instead, she got a stool for Gael and handed her a wooden spoon. She would know how to stir it and when to turn the stove off so it wouldn't burn or bubble over.

In Ember the stoves had been electric, Susan recalled. If she could get used to seeing that flame under the pot, maybe _she_ would be able to help the doctor soon, too. But it wouldn't be today, that was for sure.

Watching Gael standing tip-toed on the stool, humming loudly to herself, Susan wondered what Peter was up to. What were Marianne, Wilhelm, and Benjamin telling him and the other people of Ember? Hopefully something good, hopefully not that they couldn't stay.

"I hope Aunt Polly has a bench-at least-to sit on," Susan mumbled aloud tiredly. "I wonder if they know how old and frail Edward Pocket really is, even though he doesn't look it at first glance. He's quite old and gets tired easily."

"What was that?" Gael had stopped humming and the doctor had, in turn, heard the very end of Susan's muttering.

"Oh, nothing, I was just worrying about-about the others."

"I'm sure they'll be fine." Doctor Hester lifted Gael down from the stool. "The real trick will be getting passed Benjamin-he can be tough-but Marianne and Wilhelm are soft touches. Besides, I can't fathom them letting you all go off on your own without any protection. Something will be arranged, I'm sure of it. So don't worry. Your job is just to help me look after those little ones over there."

Susan looked over at Edmund and Lucy again. Edmund was snoring. There was a spot of drool on Lucy's pillow. This was the soundest sleep she'd seen either them in for a while, and it was somewhat reassuring.


	4. Forget Breakfast

"People of Ember!" Benjamin boomed, shouting to get their attention, since his voice was easily the soundest of the three village leaders.

Peter's attention, however, did not need getting; he'd already been waiting to hear what they were going to say.

"We've talked about your unfortunate situation," said Marianne, continuing for Benjamin, looking-Peter thought-not at all like someone who was about to throw a whole city's worth of people out on their bottoms. That, at least, was good. "We've decided that, for the time being, until we can come to a more agreeable solution, you can all spend a couple of nights here in the town hall."

A slight round of murmuring rang amongst the people of Ember. On the one hand, this was very generous of Sparks, and they were pleased; but on the other, well, how were all of them-sick and old ones included-supposed to sleep in such a small building-even if it was only for a night or two?

"Now," Marianne went on, "we understand that there are some ill persons, children, and elderly with you. So what we've arranged for tonight is this: anyone sick (or caring for the sick), anyone too old and frail to sleep on mats on the floor tonight, and any children under ten or twelve years of age, please raise your hands."

A number of hands shot up. Everyone else stayed quiet, waiting.

"All right." Wilhelm nodded, taking the number in. "All of you ones will be staying with families that can take you in."

"Professor," Peter whispered to Digory. "You and Polly had your hands up, right?"

"Only for Polly," Digory answered, sort of lying, though he clearly believed he was telling the truth. "She can't sleep here. I'm healthy as anything."

I highly doubt that, Peter thought, taking in the professor's sallow complexion and ruffled gray hair and glassy, exhausted old eyes. The poor man's weak old bones wouldn't last an hour huddled with the masses on the wooden floor of the town hall.

Thankfully, the family that took them in didn't want to take the wife without her husband, so they both went.

"Here's how it's going to work," Benjamin spoke up again now. "All persons going to stay with families will share in their hosts' evening meal tonight, and the rest of you will be provided with bread, cheese, and some fruit."

A cheer rose from the hungry crowd, though they only had a vague idea of what cheese was and none whatsoever as to what bread was. They knew, at least, what fruit meant-food-and they gathered the rest from context.

"I do wonder what kind of grub this 'bread' is," whispered a boy of about fifteen, standing three feet or so away from Peter.

"It's good," Peter told him quickly, remembering the bread he, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy had all had in back Cair Paravel, their castle in Narnia.

The thought of that old Narnian bread, maybe with a nice glass red-wine on the side and a dash of garlic and honey sprinkled on the lightly-toasted top, made the former high king's mouth water. He hadn't realized how hungry he himself was, having been more concerned with everybody else up until this point. Now he realized that his stomach had been grumbling for days; that he, too, couldn't wait for the light meal the people of Sparks were so generously providing.

Within the next half-hour or so, the food was passed out and the Emberites fell to beautifully, swallowing down the provisions as if there were no tomorrow. A few hesitated at the bread, then inhaled it. A young girl of about sixteen or so, plucking at a burst seam in her ratty rust-red sweater, said-with her mouth full-that the cheese stuck to her teeth; but this did not seem to diminish her enjoyment of the meal in the least.

Lina had gone with one of the families because of her little sister, Poppy, but Doon and his father, both being perfectly healthy-save for their runny noses, which everybody else seemed to have as well anyway-didn't. Doon was actually no more than twelve, and so could have made the cut if he had pushed it, but he knew he looked older and that he was well enough to sleep in the town hall. It was best to save whatever rooms the families could spare for those who truly needed them.

Feeling an almost childish urge to be with familiar people, Peter picked up his sleeping mat and put it on the other side of Doon's father; it seemed better to be with them than to be on his own, or with people he only knew the minimum details about.

First thing in the morning, while most of the people of Ember were anxiously looking forward to-or hoping for-some breakfast, Peter rolled up his mat and prepared to leave the town hall.

"Where are you going?" Doon asked curiously as Peter placed the neatly compacted mat in the far corner.

"To the doctor's house," he explained hurriedly. "I want to see how Lucy is doing."

"Do you know where the doctor's house is?"

Peter shook his head. "No, but as there seems to be only one doctor in the whole village, it can't be that difficult to get directions." He paused for a moment, wondering if maybe he should ask Marianne or Wilhelm-or, though he didn't much like the idea, Benjamin-but then he thought maybe they had enough on their plates with feeding the refugees and making arrangements for them. It was probably better to just get directions on the way. "I'm sure I can find out where Lina and Poppy are, too," he added, thinking Doon would probably be wondering how they were getting on. "You could come along and stop there on the way."

To Peter's surprise, Doon didn't seem keen. "No, I'll stay here for breakfast." His eyes drifted over to a group of boys about his own age; they were laughing about something and one of them tossed a crumpled napkin at another one's head.

It was only natural, of course, that Doon would want to be with other boys, since he'd been stuck at Lina's side for quite a while now; but it still, for some reason or other, struck Peter as odd and rather sudden. Sure, there was the whole 'peer group' thing, but ever since they had made up about their fight from years ago Doon and Lina had become inseparable. It seemed abnormal that he wouldn't be anxious to go and see her.

After a few moments of wondering at this, Peter shrugged, said, "Suit yourself" and swung open the door to leave. Thinking about how weak Lucy had been the last time he'd seen her yesterday, placing her into Susan's arms, left him with a queasy feeling in his stomach.

Quickly and quietly, he strolled through the snowy path towards where the majority of houses seemed to be. After a while he came across a group of children who were staring at him from their porch with shy curiosity, knowing he was one of 'the people' who had shown up the other day, and wasn't Gael lucky to have been the first to see them coming?

"Excuse me," said Peter, when he saw that he already had their attention anyway, "do you know where the doctor lives?"

"Are you sick?" One of them, a short blonde boy with freckles, wanted to know.

"She lives over there," the eldest of the children answered while another one told the boy with freckles to shut up and not ask stupid questions. "It's the house with the slanted brown roof."

"Thank you." Peter nodded at them gratefully and then continued on his way. It was a chill morning and he could see his breath traveling on the wind every time he exhaled.

Finally he came to the doctor's narrow front porch and wiped his feet on what he hoped was supposed to be a doormat, though it was so frayed and scrappy-looking that he couldn't be sure. Of course, he knew he-and the other people of Ember-weren't ones to talk. All of their clothes looked far rattier and more worn than that doormat did.

Shrugging off the irony of it all, Peter knocked lightly on the wood of the door, hoping he wasn't waking anybody up. It was a doctor's house, after all; for all he knew there could be any number of patients resting in there. Well, maybe not _any_ number-it wasn't a very large house. But the point still stood all the same.

"Just a minute!" called a flustered voice from inside. "Heaven's above, where did I put that jar of mint mixed with ground ginger? Gael, darling, when did you get up? Could you-oh, wait you can't reach that shelf. Susan, could you-no, on second thought, I'll fetch it. That's it, then. No, wait, Susan, don't go over there yet-could you please answer the door? I've got my hands full with this thing, and that other jar, and that thingummy-oh, dear! Gael! Gael! Where did you go off to? Go get the stool in the corner by the fireplace and bring it here, Love, I need it."

The next thing Peter heard was the sound of the door creaking open. Then Susan was standing in front of him, smiling faintly, fighting back a yawn, not looking as if she'd gotten much rest.

"Hey," she said softly. "How was last night?"

He shrugged his shoulders again. "Eh, all right. They gave us something to eat and the Professor and Aunt Polly are staying at someone's house now-I'm not sure who's."

"Oh," Susan said; indeed, there didn't seem to be much else left to say in regards to their current circumstances. "That's…nice…"

"Yeah." Peter took a deep breath. "So, how is she?"

"I don't know," Susan told him. "She's been asleep since last night. Doctor Hester gave her something. She hasn't woken up yet."

"And Edmund?" he asked.

"He's awake."

"Has he…I mean, is he…"

"Talking?" Susan shook her head. "No, he hasn't said a word. He just sits at her side without making a sound. He's smiled at Gael, the doctor's daughter, once or twice, but he still won't speak. I'm really worried about him, Peter."

"I wouldn't worry too much about his not talking, Su," he said in a low voice. "You know how he is about Lucy. Remember how the Professor never could get one of them to walk to school without the other? And in Narnia, whenever Lu caught a chill from when we'd been out hunting or swimming in the eastern sea? I recall the castle servants having to pry Ed away from her bedside." He smiled a little at the memory, adding, "If anything, it's that cough he had I've been worried over."

"Well," said Susan, rather grimly, "the doctor says heated honey and ginger should help, but she's been up since before the sun rose, busy as a beaver, and hasn't gotten around to fixing it for him yet. But she did give him some medicine last night, it seems to have made him sniffle less if nothing else."

"Oh, if you please," the still-flustered, anxious voice of Doctor Hester broke in. "Don't leave the door open-all the heat from the fireplace will-" She stopped talking when she saw Peter standing there, as if she'd forgotten there had been anyone at the door to begin with and assumed Susan was talking to herself and looking out the front door for some unknown reason. "Oh, Hello there."

"Hullo," said Peter politely.

"Well, come in." Doctor Hester motioned for Susan to hold the door open a little wider. "Now, you can hang up your coat over there on the hook by the pantry."

Peter allowed Susan to take his coat (which had so many patches that there was more patch than coat to it) and hang it up where the doctor had pointed to, then he went over into the small den-like room branching off of the kitchen and the pantry to see Lucy.

Edmund, and Gael, who had tired of helping her mother for the time being and was now rather adamantly set on playing 'the quiet game' with the younger two of their three guests (they kept winning, she noted), noticed him first. Lucy dozed on.

"Hallo there! I remember you. We met yesterday." Gael beamed up at Peter excitedly.

Peter didn't answer her, he kept looking down at Lucy. She looked so small and helpless that he couldn't stop tears from springing up into his eyes over the sight of her.

"Hey, Lu," he said, his voice cracking. He reached down and touched the side of her face.

Half-asleep, Lucy moaned lightly and reached for his hand, squeezing it. Then her eyes opened just a slit and she peeked up at him from under her eyelashes. Recognizing Peter, she squeezed his hand a little tighter. She wanted to say, "Don't cry", but she found she couldn't quite make her trembling lips and tired jaw form proper words. So she goggled at him pitifully for a few seconds before closing her eyes all the way again.

"She's very sick," Gael stated the obvious, glancing at Lucy.

"I know," Peter whispered, swallowing hard. "Believe me, I know."

"Don't be sad," she tried to cheer him up. "Mummy will take good care of her. People who come here don't usually die. Well, except this one time, this really little baby-maybe one years old-Mummy said it was a girl, too-she had the crop and-"

"The what?" Peter stopped crying and blinked over at her in confusion.

"You know, the crop," sighed Gael, clearly understanding what she was talking about, though no one else did.

"Do you mean the _croup_?" Susan offered.

Gael nodded enthusiastically.

"Oh." Peter understood now.

"I asked Mummy if Lucy had the crop-I mean, soup," Gael began, very seriously.

Susan opened her mouth to correct her, but Peter mouthed, "Let it go."

"But she said no, she doesn't have it."

"Well that's a relief," Peter said, grinning encouragingly at Gael (he always had been very good with little kids).

"Dash it!" Doctor Hester appeared with two jars-one with something brown in it, the other with something yellow. "I forgot about breakfast. I was going to make that heated honey and ginger for Edmund and I forgot about breakfast for everyone. Dreadfully sorry."

"Maybe I can help," Peter said, walking over and taking the jars out of her hands. "One of us can take care of breakfast, the other can fix the honey and ginger."

"Bless you," sighed the doctor. Then she thought aloud, "Wait, aren't you afraid of the stove? It's got fire under it. Your stepsister is simply petrified, I can't get her to stand next to it for longer than four or five minutes without her getting this frightened look on her face."

Why is Susan afraid of fire? Peter wondered, glancing over at her, looking for answers. She had been afraid of fire at first in Narnia, but she'd gotten more than used to it during the fifteen years. There had been no less than sixty-seven different fireplaces in Cair Paravel-not counting the servants' rooms-and none of them had caused Queen Susan any upset after the first three months they'd spent in that world. So why was she so scared of it now?

He seemed to be asking her about this silently over and over again as he stared at her, but her eyes wouldn't meet his just then; she wouldn't answer-she couldn't answer. She was too ashamed.

After a moment or two passed, Susan's face having gone rather red, Peter turned back to the doctor who asked him if he knew anything about fixing oatmeal.

"Sure I do," said Peter.

"Really?" Doctor Hester said, sounding delightfully surprised-and a little relieved as well.

"Of course. We had all the ingredients in cans; it was something of a staple before the shortages started."

"Oh, in that case, since you aren't afraid of fire, could you start some up while I double check to make sure this stuff is actually ginger and I haven't taken out the wrong jar again?"

Peter agreed and got to work.

"Mummy." Gael pulled tugged at her mother's lower sleeve. "What about eggs? Are we having any eggs at breakfast?"

"Only if the chickens have left us any," the doctor warned her daughter. "You can go and check if you like. Just don't let them out."

A little while later, Peter was just setting out the bowls of oatmeal on the counter to cool when Gael came rushing back into the house, clutching something small and round between her two hands as if it were as precious as a crown jewel.

At first, she seemed to be headed towards the stove and Peter, probably about to ask him to cook it for her, only then she looked over her shoulder and saw Edmund still sitting at Lucy's side. He must have looked very sad, because she at once glanced down at what she held in her hands, sighed a little to herself, then marched right over to him, and poked his arm to get his attention.

"Here," Gael said softly, lightly placing the object (it was, in fact, an egg) in his hands. "There's only one today. You have it."

"Thank you," said Edmund. He spoke very, very softly-almost inaudibly-and he didn't seem at all inclined to say anything further, but it was still such a shock that she stood for a few moments gaping as if a rock at spoken before saying, "You're welcome" once very quickly and then tromping back over towards the kitchen.

"What did she give you, Ed?" Susan asked when he-very reluctantly-left Lucy behind in the other room and came to have breakfast with the others.

He showed her the egg.

"What's that?" Susan blurted, not recognizing it.

Peter heard her and raised an eyebrow. He could hardly bring up Narnia with Gael glued to his side and the doctor within close ear-shot, but he could still sort of half-glower at her disappointedly.

Edmund didn't say anything.

"You didn't have eggs in Ember?" the doctor asked, breaking the awkward silence.

"No chickens down there," Peter pointed out in a low mumble, his thoughts far away.

"I see," said Doctor Hester, taking the egg from Edmund. "How do you like it cooked?"

Edmund shrugged his shoulders upwards; he didn't care.

"I'll fix it scrambled then," she decided, taking it over to the frying pan.

Seeing the way Susan watched the doctor with fascination as she cracked the egg open, Peter found that he felt the oddest urge to smack her and say, "Snap out of it!" Of course he would never have hit her, even if they had been alone, but he couldn't help half-wanting to. The fear of losing people he loved always had, he realized, rather a negative affect on him. It made him feel like something inside of him was being killed, drowned ever so slowly.


	5. It Starts

Eustace Scrubb scowled across the breakfast table that morning with-what he felt was-good reason. There were three of 'the people' sitting in his house, eating his family's food; and, in spite of his rather vocal protests over the matter, they had in fact slept in his room the night before.

Angrily, he shot a glare over in the direction of his father, Harold. This was completely _his_ fault. Eustace's mother, Alberta, hadn't wanted to let the strange people into her house at all to begin with, but he'd gone on about neighborly kindness and all that rot. Then he'd put his foot down in a way he so seldom did, in a way even Alberta's most intense sulks and sullen spells and bitter grumbling fits were powerless against.

And, for all that, they weren't even i _nteresting_ people; only some plain-faced middle-aged woman and the two children who had been in her care back in Ember after their grandmother suddenly died.

These children weren't all that fascinating, either, once the excitement of something new happening started to wane a bit. All they really were, was very pale. One was pale with sandy coloured hair, and she was twelve years old. One was pale and couldn't talk properly yet, and she was only two years old. Nothing special, nothing worth giving up one's room for, Eustace thought.

Alberta had been dead-against the people taking her son's room, too, but Harold said it was only polite to let their 'guests' have it.

"Guests indeed! More like demanding, uncaring strangers," Alberta had sniffed. But her husband took no note of this; he was used to her stingy attitude, and only hoped that-with time-his son would come to see that this was not a desirable quality in a person and out grow that particular inheritance from his mother.

Lina looked up from her breakfast (something thin and flat-tasting, called crepes) over at Eustace, and sighed to herself. In truth, she wasn't any fonder of him than he was of her.

Ever since she and Poppy and their guardian had arrived last night, he'd seemed utterly determined to give them a hard time-which turned out to be rather easy, considering this was his house and his village and they were only visitors.

First the smug little brat had declared nearly everything in his room off-limits; so while they all slept there for the night, it wasn't a comfortable stay in the least. Lina wasn't allowed to put anything on the nightstand; Poppy got scolded (then Lina yelled at for not watching her better) when she put one of the corners of the clean bed-sheets in her mouth; and their guardian got a rather nasty comment from both Eustace _and_ Alberta when she-trying to be helpful-hung up a picture she found behind the head-board of the bed. It had seemed like a nice picture, only a very little bit faded, of a sailing ship (though she hadn't known that was what it was, as she had never seen one before), and she thought it must have fallen off of the wall. Lina had agreed with her, never suspecting that it had been a present from a roamer (they didn't know what a roamer was, but Eustace did, claiming to be something of an expert on the subject) that Alberta hadn't wanted to offend, and had actually helped hang it up. And so she got into trouble for that, too.

All the while Eustace sneered and jeered at them through it all, making it even worse. It felt like it had been far longer than one night. Every little thing about them had become a snickering-subject. Their clothes were ratty; their skin was paler than the doctor's daughter; their eyes widened with fear at the sight of most animals; and they were a little shorter than the average person, having had a bit of their growth stunted from living underground for so long. Sadly, Eustace took rather a great deal of delight in calling Lina one of his favorite insults, 'puny'.

She thought more than once of telling Harold about how his son treated her, but figured that in the end it would only make things worse. Besides, this wasn't permanent; this was only for a night or two until the town leaders came up with something better. And they would, wouldn't they? They had to. Lina thought she might survive a few days, maybe a week, living with the Scrubbs, but she hated envisioning herself there for any extended period of time-the thought made her shudder.

Thankfully, there was one bit of pleasure that came her way that morning. After breakfast, feeling confided in that miserable little house, Lina left Poppy with their guardian and went outside for some fresh air. She stepped out just as Jill Pole was walking by and, as they were both kindly-natured girls, they waved to one another and found that they had somehow become friends.

"I am so glad to be out of there," Lina told Jill as they walked side by side down the main path. "That boy is horrible."

"Oh, don't worry about Scrubb," Jill laughed. "He's a stuck-up prig and a bit of an ass, but deep down he's actually pretty harmless. You wouldn't believe it, I'm sure, but he can be very kind when he wants to be."

"He must really not want to," muttered Lina.

Jill grinned lightly at that. "He's just cranky because you're sleeping in his room. His mother does spoil him a great deal-he's not used to sharing."

"We'd noticed that."

"We?"

"Me, Poppy, Mrs. Murdo."

"Who's Mrs. Murdo?"

"Our guardian."

"Oh, is she an aunt or something?" Jill wanted to know.

"Um, not really," Lina answered, sort of sadly. "Poppy and I lived with our grandmother. When she died, Mrs. Murdo, our next door neighbor, took us in."

"What happened to Mr. Murdo?"

"I don't remember," said Lina, trying to kick off a small chump of slushy sleet stuck to one of her shoes. "He died a very long time ago. Even though his widow was only our next-door neighbor, she was more like a second mother to us after ours died; even before Granny went."

"I'm sorry," Jill whispered, not knowing what else to say.

"It's alright, really."

"You'll like Sparks, you know, after a while."

"If we can stay," Lina commented, a bit dryly. "Benjamin, he doesn't seem to like us much."

"He'll come round," Jill hoped aloud.

Lina shrugged her shoulders and tried not to drag her feet as that only made more cold slush slide into her shoes. Then, "Ugh."

"What?"

She motioned over her left shoulder, back at the Scrubb's house, with her chin. "He's coming outside now, probably just wants to bully me some more."

"Really," said Jill, "I know he seems pretty awful, but he's a real brick when push comes to shove."

"I still find that hard to believe."

"Well, look, he didn't even come after us-he's going the other way, see?"

"See what? He'll still be a brat when he comes back."

"He did help me hide from some bullies once, and he gave me a peppermint," Jill told her.

"He's your friend then?" Lina asked flat-out.

"Only sometimes," Jill explained. "Whenever he doesn't have a stick up his rear-end."

That made Lina giggle. Then, when she had sobered up, "Hey, I was thinking of going down to the town hall. Doon will probably want to talk to me, I'm sure he'll want to know what the houses are like here. He's mostly interested in bugs, though; but I haven't seen any here yet."

"There aren't that many in the winter."

"Oh…" Lina wasn't sure what she meant by 'winter', yet it seemed to make sense somehow all the same.

"When summer comes, they'll be back." Jill's lip curled into a grimace. "Unfortunately." She, unlike Doon, was not at all keen on insects. And, unlike Lina, she wasn't always neutral in regards to them, either.

Meanwhile, Eustace was headed for the doctor's house. He had no real reason to be going anywhere-aside from boredom-and he might just as well have gone towards the town hall instead, but he didn't.

He went slowly, stopping along the way several times; to throw snowballs at unsuspecting passersby, to look at things, to chat briefly with the children who had given Peter directions earlier. When he finally reached the house, it was almost noon. By then, Lucy, though still weak and very sick, was awake, and she could sit up-but not for very long.

Edmund had begun talking a little bit. His pattern of speech, as everyone had already figured out by this point, largely followed Lucy's progress. When she sat up or seemed to be suffering less, a few words would come out of him. When she appeared a little worse, or else was asleep again, he might as well have been mute, because he didn't speak-not even when someone asked him a direct question.

He was the one, however, who noticed Eustace sitting on Doctor Hester's front porch. Edmund couldn't help wondering what the boy was doing there; he didn't look ill or hurt, only sullen.

"What are you looking at?" Gael popped up randomly beside Edmund and peered out the window. She saw Eustace sitting there, too.

It must have been a common enough occurrence for the bored boy to end up on their porch, because she lost interest and then went off to her room and produced a small sack of marbles her mother had once bought from a roamer, to show Peter and Susan.

After Peter had seen all of Gael's marbles at least six times each, and said, "Yes, that's very nice" at least four, he left Susan behind to endure the seventh viewing on her own, and walked over to the window. Edmund was sitting there a moment before, but now he had apparently gone out onto the front porch and was talking to the Scrubb boy. Or, rather, the Scrubb boy was talking to him-Ed, as Peter could have guessed from the start, wasn't saying anything. Lucy was asleep again and her breathing was somewhat raspy.

Peter was able to slip out the door and onto the porch, standing close enough to hear what Eustace was telling Edmund without anyone-even his brother-noticing.

"Your stepsister probably has one of the four plagues, you know," said Eustace in a very know-it-all tone of voice.

Edmund scowled. Lucy did not have any plague! She was just sick from the climate and the march and the shortages they'd all suffered; anyone her size would have been.

"She's probably going to die."

Ugh, why did he have to say that? Thought Peter, clenching his jaw. Who taught that boy to be so vile? Eustace hadn't appeared all that grand and friendly when they'd first met up the day before, but he struck Peter as even worse now. Talking about poor Lucy like that...and to _Edmund_ of all people!

"I hope," Eustace sniffed, sounding not unlike his mother, "that she hasn't given it to anyone else. I bet if she's contagious, and the real people of this town get sick, you'll all get run out. Benjamin won't let you stay if you bring diseases with you-he has the most sense of all the leaders here. You've probably got lice and fleas-all of you cave people-even if you haven't got germs. And that's bad enough.

"If you ask me, they should just toss your stepsister out now. It would minimize the risk."

Irritated, but not about to waste his breath because of it, Edmund reached out and lightly nudged Eustace off of the porch to show his displeasure.

The boy blinked up at him in shock.

Edmund raised a brow, his eyes clearly asking, "Do you care to repeat that heartless, distasteful comment, or are you all set now?"

But Eustace was not about to take getting pushed off of a porch in the village he was born into-the place he, unlike 'the people', had a _right_ to be-lightly. He stood up, climbed back onto the porch and gave Edmund a rough shove.

If they had been in Narnia, or if Edmund had been fortunate enough to grow up above ground in this world instead of being slightly stunted in Ember, Eustace probably wouldn't have stood a chance. Lucy, if she'd been well and had grown-up properly, could have taken him; Edmund could have given him such a licking his great grandchildren would have felt it.

At any rate, Edmund wasn't in the best of health at the moment and he staggered backwards. His dark eyes glistened. He'd suffered enough recently and all the rage and fear he had pent up inside of him was sprung out on Eustace as he reached out and shoved him back.

Eustace then proceeded to kick him in the shins.

Edmund winced, then shoved him again.

Eustace shoved back.

Peter got in-between them. "Whoa, whoa, that's enough!"

"What's going on out here?" demanded Doctor Hester, appearing in the doorway.

" _He_ shoved me," Eustace told her, pointing accusingly at Edmund.

Peter felt his cheeks flush at the unfairness of that statement. After all, he'd seen Eustace start it with his insensitive taunting.

"He provoked him, Doctor Hester," Peter explained, trying to set the record straight. "He said some very unkind things. He shouldn't have said any of it." Here he turned from the doctor to look at Eustace very hard. "Especially what he said about Lucy-that was uncalled for."

"That's how it works, isn't it?" sighed the doctor, her voice wistful and distant rather than angry. "One person says something hurtful, someone protests, someone shoves, someone shoves back. Next thing you know, everything's ruined."

Peter's brow crinkled. The doctor's words seemed a bit extreme. "What do you mean _everything_? There weren't any broken bones, no one was even really hurt."

"No, not this time," she said softly, though a little darkly as well. "But I was talking about something else-something worse. And yet it starts just like this. I meant what starts wars."

"That's not how the wars were!" Eustace exclaimed. "Wars were when people ran other people over with those giant tanks. They were exciting."

Doctor Hester shook her head and went back inside.

"I think she's right," Peter whispered, mostly to himself. "Maybe that is what happened here. Here in this world, a very long time ago."


	6. Arrangements and Snubbing

"I've been thinking," Wilhelm said, drumming his fingers nervously on the table he and the other two town leaders were seated at, "if 'the people' can't go on out their own-especially since many of them aren't very strong and it is winter, after all, and human kindness would call for some sacrifice on our part-would the Pioneer be an option?"

The leaders of Sparks were, of course, discussing what was to be done in regards to the people of Ember. It seemed there wasn't much else that needed attention lately-it was all about them. 'The people', love their presence or hate it, weren't going to just disappear into thin air.

The Pioneer was actually an abandoned hotel that was said to have existed-at least in part-before the disaster, and, while it was a very large building with lots of space, it needed a great deal of work and fixing up. Thus, the village hadn't been using it; the need had not yet arose to spring for the repairs.

"I'm not paying to have it fixed up for them," Benjamin said flat-out, his tone dry as dust. "Feeding these cave people is going to cost enough as it is. Think how draining it's going to be on our storehouse!"

"Benjamin," Marianne put in, giving him a stern look, "do be reasonable, won't you? Our storehouse is full, sharing isn't going to kill us."

"How do you know that?" he demanded. "How? After all, they're full now, sure, but what happens when it's shared out with three or four hundred extra persons? Eh? You tell me that!"

"So we won't be on the brink of prosperity anymore," said Marianne, feeling he was getting off the real point. "Maybe we all have to work a little harder this spring and summer. That's life."

"Still, if we're working so hard just for food," he said, bordering a bit on scoffing, "why are we going to fix up a whole building when we don't even-"

"Would we really have to fix it up?" Wilhelm put in quietly. "We could ask them to do the work on it themselves, since they'll be the ones living there. I'm sure they know what a hammer is, at least."

"And if they don't know what to do," said Marianne, "come warmer weather, we'd show them."

"To be honest, Marianne," Wilhelm here noted, "I don't think anyone would want to work in the winter; not the cave people either."

"Where are they going to live then?"

"My thoughts when I was considering the whole situation, were these," he explained; "supposing we have maybe more than half of the people move into the more sturdy rooms of the pioneer; none are very nice, but they're shelter all the same. The rest could stay on the mats in the town hall for a little while longer."

"I can't think of anything better," Marianne agreed, a little depleted.

"I can," said Benjamin coldly. "But it wouldn't be kind. And…and, much as I feel we are all going to regret this, at least for the winter, we'll have to use Wilhelm's plan."

"All things considered," said Marianne, rather severely, "I think it's quite a good plan."

Benjamin sighed heavily but uttered no further verbal retorts or protests.

"Who's going to tell them?" Wilhelm broke the slowly increasing silence.

"You tell them, Marianne." Benjamin's eyelids closed half-way.

Meanwhile, Lina and Jill had arrived at the town hall. Jill, not being from Ember, didn't know anyone there. And as Lina was too busy looking for Doon to introduce her to the former citizens of Ember, she stood off to the side, content to watch and wonder.

They were regular people, just like her and the others in Sparks, weren't they?

Jill had heard someone say that they weren't like them, that they had to be another sort of people because they were so much smaller and paler and didn't seem to know much; but it occurred to her that that might not be quite true. Lina talked the same as anyone else in the village talked; she spoke exactly the same, despite the faint accent that all of 'the people' seemed to have. And they ate the same-even if they seemed rather impressed or shocked with certain foods.

Besides, if there were things the people of Ember didn't know much-or anything-about, why wouldn't there be things that the people of Sparks didn't know about?

I wonder, thought Jill pensively, what would have happened if three or four hundred of our sort, our above-ground persons, fell down into their world when it was still lit up all brightly; before the black-outs they talk about started.

Would they have thought of them as strange, too? Probably. Really, though, when you thought about it, Doctor Hester's daughter looked nearly as small and pale as the Emberites did. But then, of course, Gael was only a child. She still could grow, while so many of the adults from ember looked so very stunted.

Still, Jill hoped rather feverishly that the town wouldn't get rid of these new-comers. Not only because they seemed helpless, but also because they were so interesting. It was how normal they were, in spite of their different culture and up-bringing, that made Jill particularly fascinated with them. How they could be so different and yet very much the same confused and amazed her.

"Doon!" She heard Lina call out, rushing towards a dark-haired boy with a serious face.

Doon was with a group of other boys that appeared to be around his own age, maybe a little older, and they, evidently, were none too pleased with Lina's presence. They had been in the middle of a conversation, and she had interrupted. She tried to talk to Doon, and while he didn't appear to be shooing her away, exactly, Jill could tell he wasn't sticking up for her in front of the others, either.

All the signs of hurt were slowly forming across her new friend's slim, milk-coloured face. Her eyes widened a little, then darkened. When Doon wasn't looking, they filled with tears which were held back with surprising grace and two front teeth biting down lightly on a lower lip that would have been trembling otherwise.

He could have picked up on this and said he was sorry. The two of them, clearly very close, could have made it up at once-it wasn't even a proper quarrel, all things considered. But, there was no such moment.

"No, it's all right, really," Lina was saying quickly, not as if it truly _were_ all right. "I…I have to go anyway. And I've got other people to talk with, too. I'll see you later."

Doon nodded and turned back to the others. Lina, looking a little prim, locked arms with Lizzie, who had just popped up beside her, forgetting for the time being about their fight back in Ember regarding Looper, stealing, and the way out, and brought her over to meet Jill.

Unlike how she and Lina at once took to each other, Jill did not find an instant friend in Lizzie. Lizzie was, after all, something of an acquired taste, and she could be a very silly girl indeed. She was now more so than usual, due to all the changes going on around her, the new places, and the recent loss of her boyfriend.

Even Lizzie, Lina was certain, hadn't loved Looper, but how she could have possibly _liked_ him-especially enough to mourn him so publicly and talk about him with complete strangers when there was so much else to focus on in this new world they'd found themselves in-was beyond her comprehension.

At least, though, she thought, her pride stinging, she isn't snubbing me just now. Doon had snubbed her, hadn't he? She hadn't thought it of him, not since they'd made up their old fight and become close; but he seemed so different now. How that distant boy who hadn't even looked her full in the face, hadn't said a word in her defense, could be the same person who'd held her and told her it was alright after her grandmother died, she didn't know.

In her defense, Lina, while she had been very brave, was also quite young and had some of that, 'well, if you don't like me now, I don't like you now, either' in her childish mind, and so thought they could make up later. For the time being, Lizzie and Jill would have to be her closest companions.

She would have liked to talk to the Pevensies, but Lucy was sick and Susan was probably busy helping the doctor care for her. As for Edmund, he wasn't talking, and understandably he'd want to be with Lucy, too. That still left Peter, and she thought she might like to speak with him, but apparently he was now at the doctor's house as well.

Then she-and Jill-saw him coming back in their direction, back up the path leading to the town hall they stood in front of. It was still nippy and it looked as though he'd forgotten his coat. Yet, he wasn't paying any mind to the cold; rather, he was looking distant and thoughtful-troubled, clearly. It was then that Lina realized what a great weight he must have on his shoulders. He probably had more important things do to than to talk to her. Besides, before Susan had become a messenger, Lina hadn't been all that close to him. There was no need, she gathered, to bother him. It was best to stick with Lizzie and Jill.

Looking up towards the town hall steps, she could see someone calling them in. The town leaders were about to say something and everyone was supposed to come in at once to hear it.

Marianne made the announcement regarding the Pioneer hotel. Some seemed glad about this, but most-those few from Sparks present and those from Ember alike-seemed apprehensive.

"What will we eat while we're living there?" one of the people of Ember called up. "Will you still be feeding us from the storehouse?"

"What if something comes up and we need the hotel for whatever reason, and these strangers are living in it?" someone native to Sparks, standing in the crowd, shouted next.

"What if the building falls down on us?" A middle-aged Ember-bred man inquired anxiously. "In such a case it would have been better for us to have died back home, underground. It's all one and the same, if we're to be buried alive."

"Silence, silence, please!" Marianne held up her hands, trying to calm them down. "You can rest assured we, the leaders, have taken this all into consideration. Food will still be provided, and I will explain how in a few moments. As for needing the hotel, what greater need could we have than this? Than that we suddenly have all these people and no where to put them-we'd have been in sorrier straits, I believe, if we had used the Pioneer before now."

Benjamin, standing at her right (Wilhelm on her left), muttered something under his breath that sounded unpleasant, but he didn't address anyone directly.

"There is no need, I can tell you right now," Marianne continued, "for there to be any worries over cave-ins, either."

"That is, in fact," Wilhelm put in, taking a step forward so as to be better heard, "the reason we are not allowing all of you to inhabit the Pioneer in its entirety for the time being; to avoid any such disaster."

A few tired-sounding cheers came from the crowd, but they lacked real enthusiasm.

"For food," Benjamin grunted, pushing his way in front of Marianne and Wilhelm now, "you will each be assigned, in groups, to a host family. You will take your lunch with your family and they will give you parcels containing food for your breakfast and supper for you to take with you to either the Pioneer or the town hall. Please understand that there will be no extravagance in the food-this is going to be economically rather hard on us providing such food, so please try to make the most of what you are given. Also, always be grateful to us, remembering what you owe."

"I think," Marianne cut in tartly, nudging him aside, "they understand the situation perfectly, Benjamin. Let's not exaggerate it to make our point, all right?"

"Wilhelm, read the list," Benjamin half-grumped, cross with Marianne for making him-however decorously-look bad in public. At least, if there was any consolation to be found, most of the people who'd heard her were from Ember, not Sparks. It would have been far more embarrassing if all of his own people, those it was his responsibility to look after and protect (which was all he was trying to do, really), had witnessed this unpleasant moment. The town leaders must always look strong for them-always.

Wilhelm sighed and cleared his throat. "Peter Pevensie, as your family is with Doctor Hester and Gael already, you will be assigned to them for mealtimes."

Peter nodded. He had naturally assumed such would be the case anyway. They may not have known it, but he'd had experiences not that far off from theirs, dealing with even heavier responsibilities than they had. Maybe Benjamin would have resented him less if he knew about Narnia...not that he would have _believed_ in it, but still.

"Lina Mayfleet, you and your sister and your guardian will still be eating with the Scrubbs; you'll be staying with them at least until the end of the winter, as we've got no where else to really put you."

Lina couldn't help it, she grimaced deeply and tried not to be sick.

And so it went on. Everyone got their assignments. Some were more pleased than others, but what was done was done.

And, when all seemed to be well and over with, Peter trudged back to the doctor's house.

As for Lina, she wandered away from everyone-even Lizzie and Jill. When she was certain no one could see her, hidden behind a row of trees surrounding one corner of the village, she did the very thing she had been secretly longing to do since the end of Ember. The one thing that seemed to be naturally forbidden for a strong, stable girl such as herself. Plunging her face into her hands, thinking of her grandmother, the frightening aspects of this new town they all would have to survive in, of staying longer with the Scrubbs, of being stuck-for the moment-with Lizzie of all people as a best friend, and most of all of Doon and his snubbing her, she cried.

A storm of hot tears on that chilly, frigid day rolled down her face until she felt better.


	7. Everybody has Problems

Regardless of all the good intentions afoot, time did not improve any shaky or ill feelings between the people of Sparks and the people of Ember; rather, it made them worse.

The people of Ember were grateful to have shelter and food, but they didn't appreciate being constantly reminded of the debt they now owed in return. Many of the children of Sparks snubbed the children of Ember in a long-forgotten manner that once-many years ago, before the disaster-was how the children of rich families, the elites, treated their servants. Most weren't unkind directly, but they still acted superior.

They had homes of their own, they said, and they didn't have to live on charity. Gael and Jill Pole, of course, were not at all like that; but that did not, by any means, stop others from being so.

It was not that they were _trying_ to be cruel. It was only that they'd heard the people of Ember were different; and, honestly, they looked it, too. As has been stated before, they were so little and pale. And, while his resentment of giving up his room was still simmering, Eustace became something of a ring-leader in mockery of the people of Ember. To their faces, he could tease the littlest of Ember's children. Behind backs, he could laugh at the older ones.

At first, the people of Ember chose to ignore this, thinking it would pass. Then, though, a bombshell-so to speak-hit them, making them very angry. If ever a child of Ember and a child of Sparks quarreled, the town leaders, it seemed, were not disposed to take the Ember-child's part, not even if they'd been in the right. Marianne defended them upon occasion, but in a much more under-hand fashion than she would have for a Sparks' child. Benjamin had no problem condemning the Ember one straight out. Wilhelm sort of turned a blind eye so that he didn't have to decide; he hated making those sorts of choices.

And what started as children's scuffles, turned into adult arguments and fights. Which were settled even more poorly and unfairly. Adults stuck up, naturally, for their own children, then resented each other.

The people of Sparks had a real dislike of laziness and they seemed to think they saw that trait in those from Ember. It couldn't be completely, they'd decided, that 'the people' didn't know how to do things-no one was _that_ dense, were they?

When disagreements, mild or no, happen to meet up around the same period of time with minor difficulties, it is somewhat inevitable that a level of stinginess will follow.

A large number of the people of Sparks began to skimp a little bit on the amounts of food in the Emberites' mealtime parcels. Now, to be fair, this wasn't because they were sadistic or corrupt, or else otherwise acting out of a shifty-eyed meanness; it was because they simply had some of the same fears-though notably less voiced-as Benjamin did. 'The people' were eating their food, living on their resources. To some extent it was almost as if a swarm of locus had invaded, for, in the eyes of the people of Sparks, the result might be the same-or at least close to the same. They wanted to help, and certainly the town leaders were allowing them more food from the storehouse in light of the extra mouths to feed, but it wasn't tons. And what could they do? Should they, they thought, be willing to let strangers eat as honoured guests and not have anything extra themselves saved up in case of an emergency? It didn't seem fair.

The people of Ember saw things a little differently, which only added to the problem. They saw a full store-house, people who glared at them and might honestly dislike them as well as resent them, and they felt their growling stomachs; and they noticed how light-headed they felt most of the time. The memory of what their mayor had done to them (he could have literally starved them if the way out hadn't been found in time) was still fresh in their minds. They saw, though perhaps not reasonably, the same thing happening again, and they were angry. Why should they starve? What wrong had they done? Had not the people of Sparks promised to help them in their time of need?

Finally, someone (some say it was Peter, but others disagree, saying he was too busy around that time to have been the one to have spoken up, regardless of how in-charge he might have felt over the people of Ember, and that it was Edward Pocket or Doon or Doon's father) spoke up and asked about possibly getting more food. The tone was, while a little terse, not unkind, and it explained calmly that they were hungry.

Unfortunately, this seemed only to anger the people of Sparks even more. Here they were giving food to refugees, doing the best they could-especially considering it was wintertime and nothing new could be planted or reaped-and the nasty, dirty-faced, good-for-nothing weaklings of Ember dared, they _dared_ , to whine about it!

"Be fair," Marianne said quietly when the words reached her ears and the village was in a resentful buzz over it. "In their place, we'd be just as hungry, and we'd voice the same concern. Think about their little ones, if nothing else. They have children, you know."

"We have our own kids!" Benjamin exclaimed, folding his arms across his chest. "Do any of them think of that?"

" _You_ don't have children, Benjamin," Marianne pointed out, lifting an eyebrow at him.

"Other people do," he argued, arching a brow right back at her challengingly. "My people, _our_ people, the people of Sparks."

"They could be a little more generous, though," said Marianne, a little unsurely. "Or maybe we could."

"How?"

"Well, we could give more food from the storehouse, since what we're giving doesn't seem to be enough."

"It's plenty," Benjamin barked unbendingly. "More than enough! I'm not-"

"Well," said Marianne, thinking this the most likely way for things to be resolved in the best interests of everybody, "let's put it to a vote. What do you think, Wilhelm?"

"Oh, Marianne…" he gave her a sad expression, begging for pardon, "don't be cross, please, but I…I agree with…with Benjamin…"

"Oh, Wilhelm!" she cried in dismay, her jaw hanging slightly agape. "But-"

"If we weren't giving anything," he explained, "I'd feel the same as you, dear, but, really, we are giving as much as we can. We weren't, you must understand, prosperous when they came to us-only on the brink of being so. This has set us back, like Benjamin has been saying…and…while…" -and here he paused and looked at Benjamin very hard- "…I don't agree with everything he's been saying, or all of his feelings towards these cave people, well, I can't deny the truth of the matter, either. There's nothing more we can do, tell them that."

"They won't like it," Marianne warned, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead. "They won't like it one bit."

"I don't care what they like," said Benjamin coldly.

Marianne kept picturing them all as they had looked when they'd first arrived; that little girl, Lucy, she'd been so sick…to think of not being able to give more food to those people…no, she must put it out of her mind for now or she would go mad. The people of Ember were at least getting something-maybe Wilhelm was right, maybe she was being too soft. Well, whatever; the vote had been cast and she'd lost out, it was two against one.

What made the situations going around Sparks that winter even more dour (though that might not seem possible) was that the relationships between the people of Sparks and the people of Ember weren't the only ones standing on poor footing. There were several minor civil wars, so to speak, going on as well.

Doon and Lina had not made up, they barely spoke to each other at all these days. Lizzie and Lina had had another fight about just what had happened back in Ember, and so they weren't on the best of terms. Jill was angry with Eustace for being such a pig to Lina and Poppy and Mrs. Murdo, so she shunned him and he stood, blinking in disbelief, not understanding why she had so instantly and harshly cut him so deep.

And then there were the Pevensies. Lucy was touch-and-go still, but she had rather improved and could walk about the doctor's house a little bit with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. This was provided that someone stood behind her in case her head swam and her legs gave way and she fell. Edmund was always there to catch her; and he spoke only when she wasn't fainting, but there was a tiring look in his eyes that showed him growing more and more weary over all of this. No one was sure at all how much longer he was going to last without having a complete mental breakdown. As for Peter and Susan, that was another long-standing issue.

Susan continued to forget things about their life in Narnia, much to Peter's deepening dismay.

One day when Susan was helping Doctor Hester by cleaning out the chicken coop (she wasn't afraid of the chickens, thankfully), Peter came around by that end of the property to see her.

Usually Gael came with Susan both to explain things to her if she didn't know what to do and to keep her company and prattle on about the Ballet Company that existed before the Disaster, which was still currently her passion. But today, Gael was inside with some scrap wool and strings she'd found stuck to part of the wire-fencing near their nearest neighbor's property, making little friendship bracelets for Edmund and Lucy. So Susan was by herself, and Peter, seeing as they'd both been so busy lately, figured it would be a good chance for them to have a little time alone together.

He was leaning against the side of the chicken-shed when she came out. "Hey, Su."

She smiled when she noticed him. "Peter!"

His own grin widened automatically.

"You're a little early for lunch," she said.

"I didn't come for lunch," he told her. "I came to see you."

"I see." She registered this. "How are things at the Pioneer?" Peter was one of the people staying there instead of at the town hall.

Dismal, thought Peter, ugly, unpleasant; not everyone is being as generous with the parcels as Doctor Hester, and Doon and his father go around with this hungry, pinched look on their faces half the time which gives me the creeps.

Out-loud, all he said was, "All right, I suppose."

"Lucy hasn't fainted once all morning," Susan reported semi-cheerfully. "Doctor Hester says her recovery might finally be starting to move along. I really hope so, Peter, Edmund's going to lose his mind."

"I think he already has." Peter shuddered; recalling the pale, frightened, half-wild little boy inside the doctor's house right then, and remembering, at the same time, how his brother had looked as a king in Narnia, dressed in his best scarlet velvet tunic for the grand event they were throwing on their ship, the _Splendor Hyaline_ , was not only ghastly but also upsettingly sobering.

"Poor Ed," Susan sighed.

They stood in silence for a few moments until, finally, Peter spoke again. "I've…I've missed you, Susan."

"Missed me?" Her forehead crinkled. "We've seen each other at least once a day."

"We've been so busy," Peter reminded her. "What with everything that's been happening…"

"Oh." In truth, Susan missed him, too, but she was a little afraid to be alone with him. He might, she realized, want to talk about Narnia; and if they did, she didn't think she could pretend to remember. She knew her limitations and didn't like to admit, looking into his worried blue eyes, that she could recall less and less every day. That she really had forgotten so much more than he realized.

More silence followed. Then his hand wrapped around hers. It was so warm in the winter-air. She sighed and let their fingers intertwine-it felt good.

"We'll be all right, you know," he whispered; "you and me, and Ed and Lu; I would never let anything bad happen to us. We'll find a way to manage, just like I promised you back in Ember."

"What if we can't?" Susan was not as unaware of the tension between the people of Sparks and the people of Ember as Peter would have liked to think she was.

"We will," was all he would reply.

She sighed again and leaned closer to him.

Peter turned half-way and rested his forehead against hers.

Susan released his hand and continued standing so close that, a few more inches and she would have been able to feel his heartbeat. It was so warm and safe with him…some distant memory, distant want, was pricking at her. She remembered in Ember when she had kissed him. She remembered times when he'd held her and not wanted to let go; and how she, too, in her heart of hearts had felt the same. Had she loved him back in that place she could only scarcely remember, dim like a dream, too? She didn't know; but she knew, she thought maybe, how she was feeling now. There was a mix of security and fearful awkwardness slowly pulling itself through her cold veins. There was snow melting inside of one of her shoes, but she didn't pull away from him in order to remove it.

His eyes closed and his already slow, visible breath became even slower as he finally pulled away-then forward again-with his head tilted and kissed her on the lips.

Suddenly a bit of propriety stabbed at her and she gently squirmed out of his grasp. "Not in public, Peter."

"What public?" Peter looked genuinely confused. There wasn't exactly a courtyard full of people watching them.

Susan glanced both ways, realized how silly that must have sounded, then a little grudgingly admitted, "Alright, I see your point."

"If I remember correctly," he said, half-smiling impishly, "we weren't exactly _out_ of public that first time you kissed me."

She blushed and waved that off. "Oh, do be serious, you were about to descend into the pipe-works. I was worried about you. And besides, no one really saw."

"Any chance you could be worried about me now?" Peter couldn't help asking. "I don't think we're being watched."

"Maybe just…" Susan murmured, coming close to him again, "…a very little bit worried."

They kissed again.

Then, as they broke apart, Peter said, "Susan, I need to know something…something I think I already know, that I've known with certainty for a long while now, only…only you've been somewhat vague about it."

"What is it?"

"You…you do love me, don't you?"

"Why do you ask?" The words came out of her mouth before she'd thought them through.

Perhaps, if a young man asks if you love him, she thought afterwards, that's not the best thing to say. Especially in light of the fact that males seem less open to starting such conversations as a general rule; it is often wise not to discourage the exceptions.

"Why do you _think_?"

"I-"

"What I mean," he began to explain himself, more gently now that he saw her face gone white, "is just…if you love me, what are we going to do about it?"

"Do about it?" Susan echoed, stunned.

"Are we going to get married?"

"Married?" Susan repeated.

"Susan," Peter borderline-snapped out of frustration, "is the parrot imitation completely necessary?"

She scowled.

"Sorry, Su."

"We're young," she said slowly. "Marriage…it'll be a while before we can…I mean, we are fourteen and thirteen."

"Well, technically," he corrected, "I'm twenty-nine and you're twenty-eight; that's plenty old enough."

She gaped at him in a baffled manner, not getting his drift.

"From when we were in Narnia…"

"Oh…Narnia…right." Tears pricked her eyes. "Peter, I'm so sorry…I never meant…"

"Never meant what?" he asked, growing concerned since it seemed like she was about to start crying-and hard, too.

"I can't remember it," she confessed. "Hardly at all…sometimes I wonder if it was just a game we-"

"A game?" The rest, he'd maybe been expecting to some degree, but for her to call it a game…of all things…

"It might have been," she muttered, more to herself than to Peter.

"No, it wasn't."

"I'm sorry."

"Me, too." In spite of his disappointment, and maybe even a little bit of anger, he reached for her hands. "But that doesn't change us being together. It makes it harder, I suppose, but we'll-we'll think of something…"

"But, don't you see?" Susan wept. "It _does_ change things. I only see myself as a kid, you know, and I think I'm starting to realize that you don't see me in that way. You see whoever you think I was back in Narnia…and I can't be that person anymore."

"You're always you."

"You see me-and yourself-as an adult, Peter," Susan explained. "I can't see us like that, not yet…in that way, you would be too old for me."

"You're not, I hope, breaking up with me?" He made sure.

"No, no…" burst out of her. "I don't want…no, of course not…not at all…I just…I don't know…"

"I can wait, Su," he said, reaching up and tucking a lock of her dark hair behind one of her ears, his fingers lingering a while on her cheek. "I can wait until you're older."

"What if I'm not," Susan whispered sheepishly, voicing her fears, "not as you think I will be? What if you have this ideal in your head of who I'm going to be when I'm grown-up and then I disappoint you? I don't want to disappoint you. You were right, I do love you. And I don't want to hurt you."

"Please, Su, whatever happens," Peter pleaded with her. "No matter what, promise me a chance. Promise that no matter what you forget you won't hold back because you think you'd be hurting me-that would hurt me worse than anything. I'll wait. When you're ready, promise me you'll let me know."

"I promise."

And with that, he took one of her hands, brought it to his lips, and kissed the back of it. In that way he bid good-bye, a sad but true goodbye, to the queen he realized he was losing more and more quickly. But he also, for good measure, lightly cupped her chin with two of his fingers when he was done, leaned forward, and kissed her on the forehead once very lightly. In this way, he was still clinging to the girl who he still loved anyway, letting her know he was never going to give up on her.


	8. A Rose for Lina

"Those people are getting worse and worse," Benjamin declared angrily at yet another emergency meeting that had been called for the town leaders.

" _Those people_ ," Marianne retorted, "are human, too. Or have you forgotten that?"

"Marianne," Wilhelm replied softly, before Benjamin had a chance to speak up, "who knows that better than us? Have we not sheltered and fed them, have we not given them the services of our doctor? What more could we…"

"What I want to know," snapped Marianne tersely, her eyes narrowing, "is who stuck a stick up Benjamin's rear-end." Turning to him, she added, "Why are you so angry?"

"If you'd have let me speak," he said, rather indignantly, "I'd have told you by now."

She rolled her eyes; her patience for these meetings and the stress and strain they covered was wearing thin, very thin.

"There have been endless complaints," Benjamin reported gravely. "The village is getting restless. 'The people' don't help them with work, they don't-"

Marianne inhaled sharply and stopped him right there. "They do the best they can-they're going to need a lot of teaching-and, besides, its winter."

"How long are we going to hide behind that excuse?" he huffed. "Until a mob comes breaking down our doors saying we're not caring for our own people correctly?"

"He's got a point, Mar." Wilhelm's voice was tender, but it wasn't firm; he didn't sound all that convinced.

And she pounced on that. "What you have, Benjamin, is a misguided sense of pride and duty. What makes the people of Sparks ours? Hmm? What makes them better than the people of Ember; they live here too now-or _for_ now-whichever you insist upon-but what's done is done. Can we please move forward?"

"Exactly! That's exactly what I was going to bring up!" he cried out triumphantly, throwing his hands in the air. "In moving on, I don't think 'the people' who live in the town hall or in the Pioneer should eat with their host families anymore-it's too great a strain on them to have some pasty stranger hovering over their dwellings all the time. It's a constant reminder of what we're losing."

"Rubbish," said Marianne.

But Wilhelm, to her disappointment, once more, did not back her up. "Marianne, this is a small thing. They'll still have food and shelter, and nothing whatever will change for those living with their host families…it really does strike me as being for the best."

"Turning them out at lunchtime," she growled, a glower appearing and tightening on her face, "is for the best? I fail to see it that way."

"They're making people uncomfortable," Wilhelm explained, his face a little red, twisting in pain under Marianne's furious glare. "Surely you can't deny that. They're very odd, you know."

"They could scarcely be more odd if they were blasted ghosts," scoffed Benjamin, kicking at the leg of his chair for emphasis.

"So they are a little pale," Marianne barked; "so maybe they ask a lot of questions and do not seem to understand much about our way of life…is it fair to…to treat them like animals over such trivial issues?"

"No, no," Wilhelm hastily blurted out. "Not animals, never."

"An old lady," Benjamin here put-in, "a valued Sparks lady, said to me, quite plainly, that seeing 'the people' sitting at her family's table at lunchtime, swallowing down the last crumbs off of their plates, speaking in those soft, under-earth kind of voices, has been giving her rheumatism."

"Rheumatism my foot," Marianne muttered scornfully. "It's just prejudice."

"And it will only get worse if we don't take firm action now," he argued back.

"Firm action against the wrong side," she muttered.

"We will vote again, Marianne."

"Let's make it easier." She looked over at Wilhelm with bright, shinning, pleading eyes. _Please Wilhelm, you're their last hope, don't side with Benjamin-he's being stubborn; you know how he gets, always got, even back when were only children growing up together. Don't let him get his way this time; it will only bring pain._ "Wilhelm, who do you think is in the right?"

"It's not a matter of right or wrong, Mar," he stammered, feeling foolish. "It's really just a matter of-"

But Marianne had gotten up, brushed herself off, and stormed out of the room. She had never done that to them before, and they were a little shocked. Clearly they were going too far. But it couldn't be helped, not really. They couldn't put the people of Ember's comforts over that of their own people. They couldn't sit around and wait for the village to revolt or for some sort of drastic action from the wrong hands to be taken. They had to make a choice, and, sadly, they'd already made it-Wilhelm, too. The people of Ember, those who did not live with their host families, would no longer take lunch in their houses. It would have to be more parcels-but, likely, without a significant increase their contents.

Meanwhile, Doon had been feeling rotten. After pondering over matters, allowing his pride to simmer down in light of all the strain everybody was going through, it had occurred to him exactly why Lina was angry. Not only had he been ignoring her, but the whole scene with the other boys, his unwillingness to stand up for her, flashed into his mind as if stuck permanently on re-play. He'd been too worked up and excited and angry and amused and afraid all at once before to see how horribly he had treated her. Only he saw it now clear as day. And, of course, he felt about the size of one of the ants he liked to study when, though it was too cold a season for them, he happened to see one (usually crawling around the Pioneer).

What am I going to do, he wondered. He thought of asking his father, but decided against it. Somehow he felt Mr. Harrow wasn't the one to ask. Besides, he was rather ashamed. Why would he want to admit to his father how unkind he had been when it could be avoided?

Finally, after considering the slim-pickings as far as options went, he settled on cornering Peter. Peter seemed to know about everything; and as it was common knowledge that he was absurdly kind to his stepsisters, Doon figured that 'how to apologize to a girl you've been unkind to' was likely quite part of that 'everything'. Of course he felt a little bad, bothering Peter when he looked so tired all the time, but, then, _everybody_ looked tired these days-it was nearly impossible to find anyone at all who appeared well-rested and nourished.

It was one of those very rare mornings when Peter was actually sitting down in the pioneer, looking out of a window (which, by the way, was broken and had been broken for as long as anyone in Sparks could seem to remember) instead of having left to be at Doctor Hester's house at the crack of dawn to see his family or else going to see the Professor and Aunt Polly to double-check that they were all right and at least getting a decent amount to eat from their host family.

Doon took a deep breath and approached him. "Peter, do you have a minute?"

Peter ran his index finger and thumb along the floorboards next to where he was sitting. He looked up at Doon with an expression like a person waking from a deep sleep; his thoughts had been far away.

"I'm sorry, what?"

Doon repeated himself.

"Oh, sure," Peter said, forcing himself to stop thinking about the cool, dewy slopes of Narnia and the luxuries and comforts of Cair Paravel. In a way he sort of welcomed the distraction, though he-at the same time-wished, paradoxly, that the weight of the problems of all his friends-as well as his family-had other shoulders to fall on once in a while. "What do you need?"

"I've been a real jerk," Doon explained, grunting lightly as he sat down on the hard surface beside him. "To Lina, I mean. You're pretty good with girls, so I thought maybe you could tell me what I'm supposed to do." His cheeks flushed from embarrassment, but he didn't let that force him to back down from saying flat-out what the problem was and seeking help. He thought he had been a coward for far too long.

"Well, you're good friends," Peter reminded him. "Have you tried going to see her at the Scrubbs' house and saying you're sorry?"

"It's not as simple as that," sighed Doon. "We've…we've been snubbing each other quite a bit lately. I want her to know that I really am sorry for how I've treated her."

"Hmm," Peter hummed pensively, thinking for a moment. Perhaps because his mind had been in Narnia only a few moments before, he found himself remembering a time when a neighboring prince, Prince Cor of Archenland, had quarreled with a lady who's name was Aravis (at the time they'd only been best friends, but it wasn't long until an invitation to their betrothal feast arrived for High King Peter and the rest at Cair); he'd given her a rose to make up for it.

Of course, roses were out of season, and if Clary the greenhouse keeper (an especial friend of Lina's) hadn't had a few cuttings of them back in Ember, Peter might have almost thought they didn't exist outside of Narnia's world. Sparks might have them, but if they did, they wouldn't be grown-much less have bloomed-in the dead of winter.

But Clary's roses were different than those in Narnia, they had been smaller and the stems paler, much more limb-just like, Peter couldn't help thinking rather sadly, the people of Ember.

Still, a rose was a rose, and, with a note attached to it, it should have been a lovely way to apologize. All the same, it was madness to think of asking Clary if she had any. The answer would be no, and they knew this for a fact. It was mostly foods she had smuggled up from their dying underground city, not flowers (of which, they'd had precious few anyway aside from the roses) but food; beans, potatoes-things of real use, things that had kept them alive until they'd arrived at the village and were able to seek help from a non-wilderness source. Not like the junk the roamers brought into Sparks! And yet, the people of Ember were considered the oddities and the barbarians-go figure.

Roamers, Peter had finally learned, were people who didn't live in any fixed settlement but traveled from ruined place to ruined place looking for old things from before the Disaster to sell to whatever villages were on their routes.

Not all of them were sensible. There hadn't been many that winter who'd turned up in Sparks; only one, a hearty young man maybe five years older than Peter was with a deep, very annoying, laugh and dark stubble on his face. He'd brought back paper-flowers. No one wanted to trade anything worthwhile for them, so in the end he'd dumped them off at the Pioneer. Which had caused more of a rift between the people of Sparks and the people of Ember. The people of Ember were cross that unwanted junk was being dropped off to clutter up their already unsuitable surroundings; the people of Sparks said they were being ungrateful snobs and should shut up or else-some of the harsher ones added-leave the village.

Some of those fake flowers had been roses. Maybe that could work! Peter stood up, pulling Doon up with him.

"Come on," he said at last. "I have an idea."

It took them about twenty-five minutes of hunting and then struggling, but in the end they managed to find the paper-flower crate and pull off the heavy, pine-wood lid. Peering down, judging by the poor luck nearly everyone had been suffering from lately, Doon and Peter were both half-expecting something horrid to jump out at them or else to find that moths had attacked the contents and that all their struggling had been for nothing whatsoever.

But, thankfully, such was not the case. In the dimness of the winter-light streaming in from yet another broken window of the pioneer, they saw a variety of colours that were still bright despite clearly been faded from their original hues. There were faux blue pansies as well as faux blood-red poppies; under that, they unearthed three white roses. One was particularly shabby looking and borderline unsuitable, so they placed it aside, not certain if they had no choice but to settle for it yet. Another's plastic stem was cut half-way through and had what looked like teeth-marks on part of it. The last was, while not perfect, reasonably in-tact and practically shinning in its snowy-white-paper-rose glory when compared to the other two.

"Now what we need," Peter told Doon, "is something to write a note on."

"There's the back of an old tin label in Edward Pocket's room," Doon recalled. "I'll ask him if I can use it."

"Ask him if he's got any string, too, while you're at it," Peter reminded him.

"Will do."

Edward Pocket, although he pretended to be a bit grouchy about it (as was his way, so Doon wasn't concerned), was perfectly willing to let the boys have their own way, and to help them. Soon there was a note, a painfully simple little note on a very scrappy piece of paper, but a note all the same, tied to the white paper rose.

"I have to go now, Doon," Peter said when this was all done, tucking the paper rose inside of his ratty coat. "I'm going to see Doctor Hester. I've been meaning to go all morning, to see how…to see how they're all doing, but…" -here he paused, looking the slightest bit ashamed- "…but I've been a bit lost in thought."

Doon nodded. "You're sure you don't mind taking the flower to the Scrubbs for me?"

"Not at all," said Peter.

"I feel as if I should do it myself," he admitted sheepishly, "but I…I…I don't know. At any rate, I promised I'd help Clary try to patch up some old plant-pots she found. They're hopelessly messed up, but I promised. And I know Lina would want me to keep my word-especially to Clary of all people."

That was probably true, it wasn't all cowardice, so Peter said nothing regarding this; he only repeated that he didn't mind the extra errand and hoped everything worked out for the best.

Walking together for a few steps more, they paused at the ajar double doors of the Pioneer. Soft, cold, white flakes fell from the gray sky above them.

"Fresh snow," Doon noted, stretching out his hand and catching a few flakes on his fingertips.

The air smelled of the fresh snow he spoke of, and Peter drank it in, sighing deeply. There was something magical, reassuring. It didn't mean that nothing bad was going to happen (indeed, Peter had the horrible feeling that something terrible was on the horizon though he couldn't put his finger on it) but it meant, in its own way, that he-all of them, but with his help and leadership-would find the way to endure it.

If anything, it was comforting to know that Lina would step outside, smell the freshness for herself, see Doon's apology, and know that things could be started anew. For Peter had no doubts that she would forgive Doon. Lina could have had an even heavier pride to swallow than she did, and she still would do so for him once she knew he was really sorry, once she was sure. The Reason? That's what best friends do. That's what lovers do. And Doon, Peter realized even if he knew it wasn't the time to mention this out-loud yet, looked at Lina the same way he-Peter-looked at Susan. And Lina returned any feelings Doon had; an idiot could have seen it.

When he reached the Scrubbs' front porch, Peter placed the paper rose down on the wooden plank by the very front of the door, knocked once, then turned to leave. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a slim, quick, born-to-be-a-messenger sort of figure flittering passed the nearest window, coming towards the door.

Good, he thought, a little relieved. So it would be Lina Mayfleet who got to it first; as long as that blighter Eustace didn't intercede before the apology reached her, everything was fine.

Lina stood in the doorway. She had heard someone knocking, but no one was there. At first, she was rather cross, thinking it a prank, then she looked down and saw the flower. It wasn't a real flower, the rose, she could tell that right away-and common sense told her-as she hadn't seen any flowers in Sparks-that there weren't any real ones in the winter anyway, but it was still lovely. For the most part, she was the sort of girl who didn't see the use of artificial things, not when the real ones were so pure. She had been among those who'd thought the roamer was mad to think of wasting space with them. But now she thought differently. There was something so pretty about the old paper petals; they were as white as the snow falling from the sky.

There was a note. Lina unfolded it and read it.

_L,_

_I am so sorry._

_Please forgive me._

_-D_

"Doon," she whispered, smiling to herself.

She couldn't stand there for any longer because Alberta was hollering for her to close the door. The smile on her face, however, did not lessen. It didn't fade away; it remained, as if grown there, for a good while.

The snow was falling more thickly now, but the wind did not change or pick up, so it went straight down. It was a quiet sort of snowfall, it seemed, the sort that just falls directly and soundlessly without roaring or fuss-beautiful and fluffy.

Lucy stood, having been given the opportunity to step out-of-doors for the first time since her arrival in Sparks, on Doctor Hester's front porch, looking out at the snow with an expression of contentment. Edmund stood behind her with his arms around her shoulders, keeping in place both the cloak and the thick woolen blanket over it that the doctor and Susan had bundled her up in.

Susan watched from the window, supposedly only to be sure that Lucy was alright and didn't need any help. Really, though, she wasn't looking at Lucy; she was looking at the snow with a more repressed wonder than her little sister. She knew, after all, that Lucy was perfectly safe with Edmund; if the poor child started coughing or fainting or gasping, he wouldn't blink before rushing her back inside.

Gael-having convinced her mother to let her go out for a couple of hours-was off, out of the sight of the Pevensies, gathering up the snow as it fell, trying impatiently to get enough to make a snowman.

Lucy breathed it all in, sighing to herself.

"It's nice," Edmund said sort of quietly, "isn't it?"

"Yes," said Lucy, her voice still on the weak-side but clearly stronger than it had been before. "I think this is why Ember wasn't meant to last for ever, Ed. Because humankind was meant to see things like this-to have moments like this."

"You know what, Lu?" Edmund smiled. "I think you're right."

"Look," Lucy changed the subject without meaning to, "Peter's coming!"

And indeed he was. He was walking up the path towards the house, grinning over at Lucy, beaming as if he'd done something good and felt proud, or else was just feeling good to be alive in general.

Susan, pulling back from the window to go outside now and meet up with him, noticed the specks of white in his blond hair-and on the shoulders of his coat-as he approached. For a moment a distant memory pricked at her mind of a golden-haired man, looking very like Peter looked now, only older, in a velvet doublet sitting on a snow-covered beach somewhere next to a large marble building, watching the winter sun rise over the sea, which was an eastern ocean. She remembered this as if she'd been watching the man from the balcony of the large marble building. For a second a name came to her mind: 'Cair Paravel', it was called. But then, just as fleeting as the azure flash of a butterfly's wing, it was gone and forgotten.

Less than an hour later, the snow mostly on the ground rather than coming from the sky by then, Lina was racing down towards the town hall as fast as her legs would carry her. Doon lived at the Pioneer, but rumour had it that everyone from the Pioneer would be down at the town hall early that evening because of some announcement the town leaders were going to make regarding them. And as the hall was closer to the Scrubbs' house than the hotel was, Lina thought she could make it there and back before sunset-not an easy task as the days were short at that time of year, but she thought she could manage all the same, so long as the journey was only as far as the town hall entrance.

She arrived just as everyone was filing out. It was strange; no one said hello; all of the people of Ember looked angry. Even Clary, who she caught a glimpse of at a slight distance, wore a stern, very hurt expression on her face.

"Doon!" she cried, seeing him and his father amongst the last to leave.

"Lina," he breathed, caught between sadness over what had just happened and joy that she had forgiven him.

"What happened?" she asked, wide-eyed. "Why does everyone look so sad-upset, I mean?"

"It was that announcement a few moments ago," he said, speaking a little through his teeth.

"Oh, what was it?" He was angry, too, she noticed.

"They don't want us" -Doon motioned over at the others from the Pioneer as well as to a few in the town hall windows- "eating with our host families anymore."

"But why?" Lina wanted to know.

"They don't like us," he said stiffly. "What other explanation could there be?"

"What's going to happen?"

Doon glanced over his shoulder at the pale crowd of Ember-people; they looked as white as ever but now it seemed to be more with rage than with weariness.

"I don't know," he sighed after a pause. "Nothing good."

Lina felt fearful. She could believe that.


	9. Promises and Poisoned Milk

Early in the morning, about two days after the announcement that the people of Ember would not be permitted to take lunch with their host families was passed, Doon awoke-sore and still tired, as usual-to the sound of loud cheering.

The cheering did not sound happy, however. It sounded more like an already-enraged crowd getting even more riled up.

"What's going on?" Doon asked his father, getting up and rummaging around for his clothes. He had to brush a few fleas off of his vest before he tossed it on over his thin, patch-filled sweater. Under most circumstances, he would have tried to get a closer look at them before ending their nasty little flea-lives, but he was anxious to get closer to his father to hear his likely-to-be-quiet reply. And besides, fascination with bugs or no fascination with bugs, he didn't want to get bitten. A little boy he'd met (one of the few people of Sparks who seemed to genuinely like him) once or twice, Kenny, had told him that there were more fleas in the summer. There seemed to be quite a few in the Pioneer _now_ ; he shuddered at the thought of more.

Doon's father leaned in from one of the few windows that wasn't broken (though it stuck a bit whenever somebody tried to open it). "The people are revolting."

"You're telling me," Edward Pocket, only half-listening, looking dazed and short-tempered, muttered.

"No," said Mr. Harrow, holding back a faint-barely detectible-laugh. "I mean, they're literally revolting. Or, at least, thinking about it…a lot…"

"Who's the one talking now?" Doon asked, looking out the window at a boy maybe a little older than himself standing on a wooden crate turned upside-down. He appeared to be the one getting the most wild angry-cheers. A few fists pumped in the air at every other word he spoke.

"Tick," his father told him. "I think he was a cart puller or something back in Ember."

Doon remembered him from Ember, but just barely. He wasn't sure if they'd ever said more than two words to each other. They had, once, but that was with the group of other boys, and Tick, though clearly quite the dominating force at the moment, had been a background-hanger more than anything else.

"Who the heck names their kid 'Tick'?" Edward Pocket grumped, blowing on his cold, wrinkled hands.

"Looks like Peter's saying something now," Mr. Harrow put in, ignoring Edward's rhetorical question.

"Pevensie?" Doon said, as if there could have been another Peter his father meant.

For some reason, Peter Pevensie didn't strike Doon as the kind of person who would encourage the mob-violence Tick seemed semi-desperate to ignite. And he wasn't, it turned out. Peter was trying to get everyone to calm down and stop cheering for Tick. It seemed, though, like Tick wanted attention and reverence even more than he wanted a 'revolt' against the people of Sparks (or at least, he said, as a starter, the leaders). And Peter wasn't letting him have it.

For a moment, Tick stood on his crate, glaring down at Peter; and Peter stared right back at him, neither willing to break eye-contact first.

"Tick," Peter said in a kingly, final voice; the one nobody from Ember except for Edmund, Lucy, Aunt Polly, and the Professor understood the origins of, "listen to me." He tightened his stare, locking it in even more firmly. "This must end…This must end before it starts."

"Idiot," Tick shouted, pumped by those he figured were on his side, not considering how stupid he was being to call someone who he could not have possibly taken in a fight an idiot. "Don't you see that we can't stand by and be bullied and starved like this?"

"What are you really after?" Peter arched an eyebrow. "Peace? Happiness for everyone involved? Or do you just want it to come to clean battle so you can look impressive?"

There was some whispering in the crowd. They'd been listening to Tick, but what Peter was saying seemed to make sense. Tick always had, those who'd known him for a long time suddenly remembered, liked attention. Hadn't he over-turned carts and made fusses just to get people to notice him? This wasn't about justice, many of them realized, their eyes finally being opened, this was about Tick and what he wanted. He wanted battle-war, even.

Tick looked furious; he knew that Peter had seen right through him. "Fine, then." The expression on his face changed ever so slightly. "Tell us, O Leader Boy, Mr. I-found-the-way-out-so-I-know-best-in-everything, what are we going to do?"

Peter blinked coolly, unfazed. If Tick had expected to shake him up with his demands, he was instantly disappointed. Inside, the former high king felt a little nervous, a very little bit like his stomach might possibly do a summersault or two, but not enough for it to be visible.

"Our only hope," said Peter after a moment quick reflection, "is to send one of ours to talk with them. Maybe get a real negotiation going. Striking at them without first trying to get to the root of the matter would kill us, we aren't strong enough. And, you know what? Tick knows that. Or he would if he had a brain that worked."

"Wrap it up, Pevensie," Tick growled.

"Who should we send?" Peter asked the crowd, ignoring Tick. "My personal suggestion would be to make sure it was someone strong and firm but not imposing. We don't want them to think we're threatening them."

"I would not take it upon myself," Tick here changed sides for a passing moment, thinking his friends would cheer for him and perhaps pick him to be the one to go. "…Unless it were urged on me, if anyone-"

"Good," said Peter, smirking. "Because no one is going to urge it upon you, I believe."

There were a few snickers at this, and Tick's face went very red. Then, a smallish voice called up and Peter turned half-way around to see a boy who was probably closer to his own age than Tick's but was so short and growth-stunted that he actually looked younger than them both; he had coppery-coloured hair and a pinched, nervous face that, though not exactly beaming with goodness, appeared honest enough.

"But," the boy said, daring to cup his hands around his mouth to make his small, mousy tone a bit louder, "why not Tick? After all, it was Tick that figured it out about the town leaders trying to poison us and all. Tried to kill some of us off like rats so that we couldn't out-number them, they did. Tick's a hero for figuring it out and making sure we stopped drinking the milk in time."

Peter didn't know what the boy was talking about. "What milk? This is the first I've heard about any poisoning."

"Oh, don't you know?" Lizzie, Lina's ex-friend, chimed in (she had a crush on Tick, finally having gotten over Looper). "Some of us weren't feeling very well and were down at the town hall. I live with a host family now, of course, but I went to visit my friends there. There were about, I think, six…no, maybe ten…of us total."

Peter nodded in a 'go on,' sort of way.

"Well, the town leaders left milk on the doorstep for us…fresh milk…still warm from those big animals…what are they called again? It's still weird to think that it doesn't just come from tin cans like in Ember."

"A cow," someone told her.

"Right," Lizzie went on. "It was still warm from the cow."

Peter thought he saw a shadowy cloud of pride cross over Tick's face, but not the sort of pride a person feels when they have done something good; rather, it appeared to be the sort of pride a person has when they have done something cruel and wicked and think not only that they are going to get away with it but also that it will benefit them somehow. Ruling for fifteen years had taught him, to some degree, to read a face; and Tick's was far more of an open book than anyone present realized.

"Lizzie," Peter interrupted, putting a hand up, "did you see the town leaders leave it?"

"No," she admitted. "But, well, Tick did, and there was a note."

"All right, keep going then. Sorry."

"We drank the milk-or at least we started to-but it had this funny aftertaste and some of us were starting to feel very sick. Poor Tick, who drank his much quicker than us because he was so thirsty-" here she paused and twisted her face into the closest thing to a sympathetic expression she could manage and glanced over at said Tick "-he was the one who figured it out. He even taught us how to force ourselves to vomit it up."

"Oh, he did, did he?" Peter thought he was beginning to understand exactly what had happened.

Gael, Doctor Hester's little daughter, had claimed to see someone sneaking into their barn. She said she thought they were stealing milk. It had been in the middle of the night and she'd woken up Susan who had been convinced little Gael was only dreaming and told her to go back to sleep again. But the next morning, the cow didn't have any milk to give them-and Pearl (which was what Gael had named their family cow) had never failed them before.

That thief could jolly well have been Tick. He was clever, Peter thought, but not clever enough. He hadn't thought through everything, not _quite_ everything.

Benjamin had said, very directly, that he was not going to give the people of Ember anything 'extra'; he had made that more than clear. Tick might have taken that into account in that he chose only a few slow-witted persons who were either gullible or else easily frightened, seen to it that they were the only ones in the town hall at the moment, and carried out his plan. How else would he have been able to pretend that he was teaching them to induce vomiting spur of the moment? He would have had to have practiced. That is, if he didn't want any of his fellow Emberties dead.

The real question was, how did Tick manage to keep the little milk episode quiet until now? Why wasn't a panic started? Peter's best guess was that Tick had told them all that he planned to get revenge on the town leaders-or some other similar rot-and not to tell anyone, especially the grown-ups, what had happened.

"Very clever, Tick." Peter grinned at him, the smile more of a grimace than anything else.

"Thank you."

"No," Peter sighed. "Thank _you_ , Tick. For trying to start a war."

"What?" he exclaimed, confused. Clearly this wasn't going quite as planned. "Me? Trying to start a war? No, not me, it was the people of Sparks; treating us as they do, and then, on top of it all, trying to poison us a few at a time…"

Peter folded his arms across his chest. "Oh really? Is that the story you truly and honestly want to stick with, Tick? This is your last chance to confess. If I were you, in as deep of trouble as you will likely find yourself in a few moments from now, I would take it."

"Confess!" Tick practically spat. "I have nothing to confess _to_!"

"Fine." Peter reached up, grabbed the front of the collar of Tick's shirt and pulled him down off of the crate.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing?" He protested as Peter climbed up onto the crate; but no one paid Tick any mind at the moment except for Lizzie, who was continuing to gaze at him fondly.

It took a moment for Peter to find his balance. Tick had slightly smaller feet and his weight, while pound-wise not a significant difference from Peter's, was distributed differently as their body types were polar-opposites. He had to step more carefully to avoid cracking one of the weaker slates and getting nothing but a twisted ankle for all his pains.

In a loud, clear voice, the sort people always listened to when Peter used, he explained Tick's plan in full-even sharing the details of Gael's supposed 'nightmare' and the missing milk.

"Don't believe him!" Tick shouted.

But, really, it was more than apparent that everybody did, and without question. Even Lizzie's facial expression changed from infatuated to infuriated.

"I vote for Peter," Lizzie was actually the first to shout. " _He_ should go and talk to the town leaders!"

"Lizzie," Tick cried out, knowing she had liked him. "Poppet!"

"Don't 'poppet' me!" she hissed through her teeth. "You sneaky little worm. I never want to see you again, Tick."

"Humph," growled Tick. "Don't need you."

"Oh!" Lizzie put her hand to her heart. "You don't need me? This is really it? Oh, Tick, say it isn't so!"

Peter rolled his eyes. "Perhaps the two of you would like to continue this conversation elsewhere?" he suggested. "After all, Tick, I don't think, if I were you, I'd want to wait around here any longer than need be." His eyes shifted over to a group of angry-faced Ember-boys clenching their fists and leering in Tick's general direction.

"Come, Lizzie." He took Peter's advice.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," she bawled in a very over-the-top sort of voice.

"Lizzie!" he snapped.

"Coming!" She, ever one of the ficklest minded girls to walk the planet, went with him.

So it was Peter, everyone agreed, that should go and speak to the town leaders in their behalf. Few had any hope that it would do much good, as plenty of them had tried-including probably Peter as well, come to think of it-to speak up before, but anything was worth a try.

Thinking over what he must do, he finally settled in his mind that he would try to see if he couldn't talk to Marianne alone first. Marianne seemed the most tender-hearted of the three, and it had been her, far more than the other two, who'd at least tried to stick up for the people of Ember. And, if she hadn't always done such a good job of it, well, maybe that was what Peter had to talk to her about.

Secretly, he thought, strange as it might sound, that out of them all, the one he should most like to talk to was that stubborn twit Benjamin. Peter felt, much as he was beginning to dislike the man for all the problems he was inflicting upon the people of Ember, that he understood him-maybe a little bit. What would himself have done, he wondered, back in Narnia if suddenly hundreds of Telmarines (people of the country of Telmar; they were neither foes nor allies of Narnia, they were just sort of there) had shown up during one of Narnia's rougher years and asked for help? Peter hoped that he would have been good to them, kind at all costs, but there were moments when he, upon reflection, wondered if he truly would have been. Or would Susan-bless her tender heart-have had to convince him to give more than the basics, in spite of economic problems that might ignite? But Benjamin would never grant him an audience; he thought of Peter as 'only a kid', and he knew this was so without being told.

No, first he must go to Marianne and speak with her. He would explain Tick's poisoned milk plan, thus quickly showing that he wasn't being bias towards his own people. Then, perhaps, if she hadn't turned him away, he could try and add that, even if the food amounts given were not increased, they should still be allowed to eat where they liked. What harm, really, would it do to have things back they way they'd been before? What had they, the people of Ember, done that had caused them to become angry and turn them out like that?

She would listen, Peter told himself, he would do his best to see to it that she did. Yet, his heart was heavy and his nerves were shot. Supposing she didn't listen after all? Or, worse, if she did and could-or would-not go up against Benjamin and Wilhelm.

He shivered from more than just the cold air as he stood on the porch of the house he was told Marianne lived in, rapping his knuckles on the door.

The door swung open, and, to Peter's great surprise, it was Benjamin who stood there, not Marianne.

"What do you want?" he demanded when he saw it was an Ember-boy.

Glancing over his shoulder, Peter noticed the Sparks-bred children who had given him the directions supposedly to Marianne's house, hiding behind a brown, leafless bush, snickering into their palms.

Nice, he thought, that's real nice; and you wonder why we don't like you.

"I was looking to speak with Marianne, sir," said Peter, at last, when he steadied himself and decided that it would be highly undignified to turn on his heels and run like the wind.

Benjamin's eyes narrowed. "She doesn't live here."

"There's been a mistake, Sir," Peter apologized quickly, deciding not to sell out the Sparks-children, since Benjamin wouldn't believe him anyway. "I'm sorry."

"She's a busy woman, you know," Benjamin told him shortly. "She doesn't have time to talk to troublesome little kids."

 _Troublesome? Little?_ Peter wondered if there was anything decent in that whole sentence, anything that wasn't offensive. He tried, but he could find nothing. The whole phrase was little more than a complete insult.

"With all due respect, I'd rather have her tell me that herself than you. I know she is busy, I understand that. But I have to talk to her. It's very important."

"What could you possibly have to say to her that you can't say to me?"

"I thought she would listen," Peter said, his voice surprisingly level. "If you would listen, I'd just as soon talk to you. You won't, though, will you?"

"Let me get this straight," huffed Benjamin, coming out all the way onto the porch and shutting the door behind himself; "you're telling me that I don't listen?"

"Yes, that's it exactly."

"Cheeky."

Peter shrugged his shoulders.

"I could throw you off of this porch."

"I'd like to see you try."

"Again, that was cheeky. And, quite frankly, insolent as well. Where are your parents?"

"Dead."

"Oh." Benjamin wasn't completely heartless, even if he seemed it sometimes, and he hadn't been expecting that. It had been a little difficult, in light of everything, for him to keep track of all the different families; and he hadn't remembered that Peter, his brother, and his stepsisters were orphans.

Peter sighed heavily.

"Marianne lives across the path behind where you're standing," Benjamin gave in. "Two houses down from being parallel to my own."

"Thank you," Peter said, and started to turn around to leave.

"But, as you're already here," Benjamin stopped him. "I could save you the bother of a the trip and listen." The sky was dark gray above them. "Looks like sleet, anyway."

"All right," Peter agreed. "It does look rather like sleet."


	10. All These Sparks

The first thing Susan noticed about Peter when he returned from his 'chat' with Benjamin were his blood-shot eyes. He carried himself very wearily and his face bore a restless sort of distance about it.

Strangely enough, though, the conversation hadn't been a failure-at least, not yet, anyway.

While maintaining a good level of civility, Benjamin and Peter had vehemently disagreed on most matters. Then there were ones that utterly stumped them both, and they had to admit that-which, also, wasn't easy. The conversation went on for days and after each 'session', Peter returned, not to the Pioneer but, rather, to Doctor Hester's house. There he would sit with Susan on the porch for hours. Neither of them spoke. Peter was wearying of speaking and needed nothing more than someone to hold his hand. She didn't have to say she was proud of him or that she believed in him; he knew it perfectly well when her fingers intertwined with his and when she rested her head on his shoulder. Without question, he knew what she meant.

Lucy was still weak and stayed inside with Gael and Edmund most days. Whenever she was feeling up to it the three of them played games together. Occasionally, Edmund, who was speaking far more frequently now, brought up that he was worried about Peter and hoped that he would get things sorted with Benjamin before the people of Ember considered another possible act of revolution. Gael was uninterested in whatever it was Peter and Benjamin discussed; she was too young to understand how serious the issue was. And Lucy, although concerned about it, didn't quite have the strength to worry anymore. So Edmund kept her, at times, a little in the dark-especially when there was no good news to report and the tired circles around her small blue eyes were a particularly dense gray.

Then one day Peter arrived at the doctor's house with a different expression on his face, one slightly harder to read.

Susan was waiting for him with a cup of hot tea which he took graciously and swallowed about half of in one steady gulp.

"How did it go this time?" Susan asked, taking his almost-empty cup from him and refilling it.

She still had a slight fear of the fireplace, but her nerves were no longer bothering her when she stood in front of the stove, and she'd been helping Doctor Hester and Gael with the cooking more and more lately. And so making a full pot of tea had been surprisingly easy for her and, though she would have never said so out loud, she felt absurdly proud over this.

Peter sighed. "I don't know, Su. I really don't know." He shook his head, mulling over everything that had been decided. "On the one hand, I think the people of Ember will be glad with the new arrangements…it…" -here he had to smile- "…it means we can all stay."

"Oh, Peter," Susan exclaimed, clasping her hands together happily, "that's wonderful! Why aren't you glad?"

"Because," he sighed, "I don't know how many of them are going to be so thrilled to give up their past. I've been talking, at first, as you know, only with Benjamin; but a couple of days ago, he arranged for me to speak with Wilhelm and Marianne, too. And if we stay and live the way they want us to, the only way we can possibly survive (I'm sorry, but I can't take care of everyone by myself in this world, Susan, I just can't), is to become part of Sparks. No more people of Ember and people of Sparks. Marianne has graciously allowed us to join their community-for real, this time. Wilhelm has seconded the notion. I think Benjamin is still a little against it, but he's coming around-especially since I've more or less promised that if they'll be patient with all of us and our limitations, we-the former people of Ember-will help them with farm work and growing crops and such when the winter ends. It'll be hard, we all know that. No one will be prosperous. But we'll all be the people of Sparks; that's the only way."

"Peter," Susan said gently, reaching out and putting a hand on the side of his arm, "Ember is dead. We all have to accept that, even if it means officially joining the people of Sparks. At least this way we'll get equal treatment and everyone, once the sticks in the mud get sorted out, can go back to eating with their host families."

"Yes," said Peter, "but not for ever."

"No?" Susan tilted her head and crinkled her brow in confusion.

"They're going to help us build homes of our own sooner or later; we're the people of Sparks, too, now. You have to remember that."

"And Benjamin agreed to this?" She found that a little hard to believe.

"Reluctantly," Peter told her, with the traces of a small, semi-playful smile threatening to appear on his lips. "But, yes, he did."

"I see." Susan didn't know what else to say.

"You know, Su," Peter felt he had to remind her, "if you ever do decide you want to get married, we…we could have our own house."

"And Edmund and Lucy," Susan added.

"What about them?" Peter looked puzzled for a moment.

"Yes, I just meant…I don't know. Forget it."

"That they won't want to live with us for ever?"

"Why wouldn't they?" Susan looked even more puzzled than Peter had been.

"I've seen them grown up," Peter pointed out, though he knew talking about Narnia in front of Susan was rarely a good idea these days. "And he's protective of her now."

"So are you."

"But it's different."

"How so?"

"Like it is with us," he said flat-out. "Or might be…if…if you decide it's what you want." _And I hope you do more than anything in the world,_ he added in his mind.

"Oh, Peter!" she scoffed. "Do be practical! You can't be reading into Edmund wanting to marry her already. She is only seven."

"I'm not saying he's going to marry her tomorrow. Or even that I'd be entirely comfortable with it ten years from now. I'll still have to give Edmund the 'you hurt her and I'll beat you senseless, brother or not' talk. But, I think, it might work out."

"That's a long time from now, Peter. How do you know he won't be interested in someone else by then?"

"We're not." Then he looked at her and saw her expression recoil slightly. Lowering his brow he added, "We're not…right? I mean, _you're_ not?"

Susan didn't answer.

"All right, who do I have to kill?" His eyes darkened a full shade.

"No, Peter, it's not like that," she swore, reaching for his hand to reassure him. "They're isn't anybody."

"Then why-"

"But what if there was…someday?"

"Why would there be? You love me, I love you."

"It's a big world up here and if something happened, if either of us ever…"

"Please don't say that," he begged her, holding back tears. "I love you, not anyone else. That's just how it is and always will be-I know that."

"What if I don't?" she whispered.

"Susan…what are you saying?"

"That I need more time to figure everything out. Nothing's changed since we last talked, I promise, and I will give a chance when I'm ready. I just…I want to know how long you're willing to wait."

"Till every world that ever was ends." Peter reached over and gently brushed a lock of her hair over one of her shoulders. "Is that clear?"

"Yes." She smiled at him; there were tears in her eyes, too.

"Oh, if some dashing man comes and tries to steal you away from me between now and then, I actually may very well have to dispatch the poor sap."

Susan laughed at that. Reaching out, she touched the tip of his nose with her index finger. "You're so funny, Peter."

"I'm dead serious." He looked it, too.

She giggled, sighing in a melancholy manner to herself.

"You think I'm teasing?" He shook his head. "The boys had better keep their hands off of you…or I may have to break them."

"Ah, you're a real joker." She got up and started to walk away.

"Hey," he stood up and fast-walked over to her side, "to end this conversation on a good note, let me just say it one more time."

"Say what?" She stopped walking.

"I love you."

She nodded. "I love you, too."

Leaning forward, Peter kissed her on the cheek. "I've got to go now, I wouldn't want to be late for the town leader's announcement."

"Tell me how it goes."

"You could come," he offered.

She shook her head and forced a small smile. "No, thank you."

"Why?"

"It's too cold for me." She glanced over her shoulder at Edmund who was pretending not to listen to their conversation while he used the poker to turn over a few logs in the fireplace.

"Yeah, you probably would rather stay here with Ed and Lu. It's likely for the best." He said the words with enough conviction in themselves, but Edmund sensed that he didn't completely mean them, that he would have preferred to have Susan at his side when the announcement was made.

"I'll come with you," said a little voice at his elbow.

He looked down to see Gael who had turned up out of no where.

Susan bent down to Gael's level. "You keep him out of trouble, dear."

"I'll do my best." Gael beamed, her lips splitting into a toothy grin.

All things considered, the announcement went off well. A few individuals had a hard time accepting that they would no longer be the 'people of Ember', but for the most part the majority seemed to understand that Ember-like it's namesake-wasn't meant to last for ever; their city was dead. Starting anew did not mean changing who they were, although it might mean a few sacrifices all around.

One of the nicest parts was that, through much strenuous effort, Peter had managed the impossible. He had, without blackmail of any sort, actually convinced Benjamin to apologize for the no-lunch-with-host-families incident. It was a rather stiff apology, but it was honestly meant and was taken as such.

Tick was one of the few who didn't at all like the arrangement. Still, in spite of everything, he wanted his war-he wanted excitement. And he couldn't stay without causing trouble, so he did the first decent thing he had probably ever done, made the first sensible decision he had probably ever even considered in all of his life. A week later when a few roamers appeared in Sparks, Tick left with them. His former fellow Ember citizens rarely saw him after that, and it was largely in passing glimpses when they did. That was the way they liked it. Except for Lizzie, who wept endlessly that it was cruel of him to leave without asking her to come with him. She was far too silly in the head to rationalize that even if Tick had really cared for her (he hadn't) twelve was much too young an age for eloping at any rate.

As for Peter, when all was said and done, he was well liked by all of the people of Sparks-both those that had once been Emberties and those who hadn't. Come springtime, he would be one of the first to start on the building of the many new houses that the increased number of the people of Sparks would call for. In the meantime, he would begin helping with some mild repair projects on the Pioneer so that it was a safer place to sleep and less people had to stay in the town hall, which really was far too cramped and something of a fire-hazard.

At night, shortly after the people of Ember officially joined the people of Sparks, Peter started to have vivid dreams of everyone living happily in peace together in a beautiful land that did not actually look at all like the town of Sparks. It looked, instead, like Narnia except that it was richer and greener even than that near-perfect country he'd once ruled over had been. The cliffs were less imposing and twice as beautiful; the seas seven times as blue and deep, but when one gazed at them, one never had to fear drowning.

Everyone seemed to be there. Edmund and Lucy (older and happy and perfectly healthy again, no longer stunted or weak), Gael and Doctor Hester, all three of the town leaders (even Benjamin), Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb, Doon and Lina, Edward Pocket, Mr. Harrow, Clary, The Professor and Aunt Polly, as well as all of the other former people of Ember (except for Lizzie and Tick whom Peter forgot because he never really thought about them after the poisoned milk incident was resolved) and all of the old friends he and his siblings had known in Narnia; in short, everyone that mattered. Everyone that is, aside from Susan.

In Peter's dream, she had a throne right beside his own, where it ought to be, but it was always empty. Sometimes, he woke up with tears in his eyes from the sadness of that portion of the dream and how it marred the rest. But this did not leave him in despair, for he believed that anything was possible. And if the beautiful vision he saw in his mind's eye when he slumbered was only a beautiful future laced with a warning, he would take it. Peter was determined to make sure that the happiness all came true, even if the place like Narnia-but ever so much more real-was never found, and that included keeping Susan. He would not lose her, he was certain. Not for real he wouldn't. Each day was a new day; with that, came hope. Susan loved him; Peter, in turn, loved her. She would be ready for him someday. They would be more than stepbrother and stepsister someday. She would remember Narnia someday. It just wouldn't be today. Peter could live with that.

The last snowfall of the winter came through Sparks, little more than a light dusting. The Pevensies all sat on the porch together to watch it. Lucy was half-asleep, clinging to Edmund's hand. Susan was fully awake, sitting at Peter's side, but she leaned on his arm in a tired manner anyway.

"Spring is coming," Edmund noted.

"Yes," said Peter.

"Today or tomorrow will be the first day of thawing, you can tell by the wind."

"Hmm," Peter agreed, a little absently.

"So," Susan put in, "this is it, then. We, the Pevensies, live in Sparks for the rest of our lives, no use pretending any different."

"Don't you like it here, Su?" Edmund asked, a bit taken aback.

"I do," Susan assured him. "I just…I don't know. Maybe I was expecting something a little _more_ when we found our way out of Ember."

"This isn't the end, you know," Peter shifted slightly to face Susan, nudging her off of his arm momentarily. "It's only the beginning. That's what Sparks are-a beginning. This is meant to last. Perhaps even to grow."

"I like that," Susan murmured, both to Peter and Edmund and to herself.

"Perhaps this is the beginning for you, too, Pete," Edmund suggested, blinking as the white dusting seemed to come to an end and a sun that was certainly not the same sun they'd been seeing all winter peeked through the silvery-gray clouds. "Peter of Sparks, now that's a name that sounds like the start of something."

-The End-


End file.
